


Smother

by Funkspiel



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Aftercare, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Food Issues, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, M/M, Multi, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Praise Kink, Recovery, Sickfic, no beta we die like men, sub space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:34:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 29,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22314127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Funkspiel/pseuds/Funkspiel
Summary: The first time it happened, Geralt was alone. Not alone as he once had been. Not alone because he chose to be alone. Alone, because he drove them away. No one would have a man who used ill-gotten wishes and spewed nothing but poisonous barbs from their mouth when you tried to comfort him. Alone, in a tub of water to scald the ache from his muscles, he wondered why it did little to relieve the pain. Why still he ached. Why it coalesced around his lungs like a thorn bush.And then the coughing started.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 117
Kudos: 1479
Collections: Wasn't Quite Expecting This (But I Loved It)





	1. Smother

**Author's Note:**

> Hello. All of this is flimsy garbage. So sorry. Enjoy.

“When do witchers retire?” Jaskier asked, a question littered in a dozen of babbling attempts at conversation as he tuned his lute, eyes on the task at hand. As if conversation was more a habit than an act of intention for the man.

Geralt sighed as he saw to it that Roach was properly taken care of. She pushed her head into his chest, and for a moment he fancied she was urging him to answer. So, despite himself, he did. Mostly.

“When they get too slow,” he said, letting the words speak for themselves as to what that retirement involved; namely death. And in a way, it was correct. Only… witchers often did not slow from age. Or at least, not from age alone. Not that the bard needed to know that. It sufficed to admit that a witcher’s life ended in agony.

Nothing wove a more enticing story than sacrifice, after all. Even Geralt knew that. And that’s all the bard was after, he reminded himself.

A story.

The answer appeared to appease the bard. He chatted on about how a song to improve the man’s legacy was needed now more than ever, then, if the only peace he’d ever know would be that which the coin of townsfolk and nobles might provide him for a job well done. Jaskier rambled at Geralt eagerly, testing lyrics between subtle twists of knobs and strings, all the while mentioning that everyone loved a tragic hero. That his songs would make the man beloved, immortal – or at the very least tolerated instead of driven out of town.

Geralt hummed as he stoked the fire. No need to give Jaskier more then. That half-truth was more than enough to at least get the bard to stop asking his damnable questions. No need to tell him that death by a monster’s fang or claw was in fact a mercy – kind and fast – in comparison to the truth.

No… No need for that at all.

— • —

There was no knowing when it might start. Witchers, for all their lore and bestiaries and research, had very little to say about this: the way in which they _naturally_ died. Geralt had looked once, asked once. He received little more than uncomfortable stares about the subject. Not that it mattered. It sufficed to know only what needed to be known. That all living things died, including witchers. It mattered little if it was by a monster’s claws or a beast’s fangs or a mortal’s sword or the slow, gradual suffocation of his own body.

He would die. It didn’t matter how. Regardless, it was inevitable. Regardless, it did not change who he was or what he did or how he did it. Geralt of Rivia was a witcher, and he would hunt until Death took him.

When he was younger, it had been easier to ignore those thoughts. To push them somewhere deep down where they only whispered from time to time. Now?

Seemingly out of nowhere, he found himself wondering more and more about the way witchers passed. How and when it might come for him, the Witcher’s Blight. And every time it left a strangely cold and heavy feeling in his gut. Unidentifiable and uncomfortable. Geralt wondered what that was.

— • —

The first time it happened, Geralt was alone. Not alone as he once had been. Not alone because he _chose_ to be alone. Alone, because no one would have a man who used ill-gotten wishes and spewed nothing but poisonous barbs from his mouth when others tried to comfort him. Alone, in a tub of water to scald the ache from his bones, he wondered why it did little to relieve him. Why still he ached. Why it coalesced around his lungs like a thorn bush.

Then the coughing started.

Small, innocent. More like a hiccup than a fit. But he felt something dislodge from his chest, work its way up onto his tongue, and when next he coughed he felt it land in his palm.

He didn’t quite put it all together. How was a witcher to feel, after all, when they’re supposed to feel nothing at all? He stared at the little blue petal in his hand, fingers trembling, the petal itself framed by a droplet of blood or two.

How was a witcher to feel when death stared him in the face? Nothing, he had always assumed. It wouldn’t be the first time or the last, he had been fighting things that would kill him if given the chance all his life. It would be no different than staring down a griffin or wyvern or some drunk, belligerent man in a bar too buzzed to think twice about attacking a witcher just because Geralt had eyes like a cat.

Only… this he could not fight.

That stone in his stomach grew heavier, colder. He could avoid putting a name to it all day, but like Fate, it would appear. Death would not be ignored either. At least now he wouldn’t have to worry about his child surprise. The thought brought a rough, rasping bubble of laughter up through his chest; still sore from the petal it had expelled.

His hand fell beneath the water. He watched the petal float, small and delicate, then sink, as all things did eventually.

— • —

The coughing started light and infrequent. Purple and blue petals tumbled from his lips now and then. It didn’t stop him from hunting or fighting. It did not slow him. But Death dogged him, always trailing just behind him, just out of sight.

Perhaps he had escaped Fate after all, he thought one night when the fire was high and yet did nothing to warm the ache lodged in his chest. He threw the petal that he coughed up onto the flames. Thought, just for a moment, that he could smell something familiar when he did.

It passed.

The hacking did not slow him until one day, much without his notice, it did. Crawling up on him so slowly he didn’t even realize how bad it had gotten until a bite from some hell-be-damned ghoul left him feverish in the back of a kind man’s cart. He dreamt of many things. He dreamt of his mother, who left him. Who saved him. Who said… something about him dying, maybe… He tried to remember…

_Large eyes, a mother’s eyes, and yet so foreign to him. Her mouth pulled into a pained twist as she wiped something from the corner of his mouth. He could barely focus enough to see such fine details, but he didn’t need to see it to know what it was. A petal, either purple or blue. He wondered what sort of flower it would be, to have both blue and purple petals._

_“I can calm your fever,” she said softly, her hands cold against his brow, “And I can save you from_ this _death,” her fingers trailed over the bite, “But what ails you otherwise… is much more complicated.”_

Complicated.

He hadn’t understood or remembered the words at the time. Hours passed, first in the woods, then back in the bed of the villager’s cart. All thought of his mother and her cryptic warning fleeing the moment the cart stopped, distracted as something indescribable had drawn him from the back of the cart and into the forest. The blossom petals disappeared from his mind at the sight of her: Ciri, drowning in her overgrown blue cloak. Eyes so big they could make up the sky. She launched herself into his arms, and something strange and unidentifiable – and yet something that had been burning so disturbingly often in his breast these days – alit inside him. Something warm. And if he traced it, it led like a thread right back to her. To her, and out – splitting in two – out and out and…

It was complicated.

— • —

Understandably, the girl cried. Often in her sleep. Often when she thought Geralt was sleeping. At first, he tried to ignore it. He was not the girl’s father. He didn’t know the first thing about comforting the girl. He rarely stuck around for that. But this was no village contract. He couldn’t go sleigh the monster responsible and at least give her the peace of a grandmother avenged. Her family, her very way of life, was gone. A life he had never known, could never understand.

At least she was taking the whole ‘child surprise’ thing better than he had.

Ciri cried, and Geralt let her have her space to do so. But more and more, he felt a thread pull him closer and closer to her. Her soft sobs, muffled bravely into her little fist lest the witcher see and think less of her, softening him more and more each day. How could he ignore those sounds? How, when they reminded him constantly of the fact that a child her age should be smiling, not crying.

Had he, in a way, brought this on her? Had Fate, in its quest to drag Geralt down to submission, destroy everything about the little girl’s life just to prove that it would not be ignored? The thought left him cold and uncomfortable.

Finally one night, the last thread of his cool air of detachment broke. He sighed and in doing so heard her suddenly silence and stiffen, but for one or two errant sniffles. He sat up, ran one hand through his hair, before stoking the fire enough to heat the tin kettle he kept in his pack. With it, he scooped a small amount of tea leaves from his increasingly sparse stash, stowed them into a fine mesh pocket, and dropped the little bundle into the kettle with water. All the while, he felt the girl’s wet eyes on him. Waiting.

“It’s okay to mourn, Ciri,” he finally said, aware of the words to say even after Kaer Morhen beat them out of him. He had heard mothers and fathers and uncles and aunts and grandparents say the words enough to the children displaced by monster killings. Mourning meant nothing to him, he need not mourn. The boons of witchery. But he recognized a human’s need to express pain. Especially that of a child’s. Perhaps if she felt free to purge it more openly, it would help.

And for a time, she did. As the water heat, she wept into her hands, her face growing pink and puffy. Awkwardly, Geralt let her, unsure of what else to do. Focused, instead, on the task at hand while trying to give her space, as he might an adult. Did children require space? Or less space? Weeping got you a reprimand – verbal or otherwise – in Kaer Morhen. He felt lost, watching her.

Eventually her weeping lessened to whimpers. Then, to sniffles. When those too stopped, she shuffled up beside him and pressed close to his flank. He allowed it, due to the chill and the chill alone. Refused to acknowledge that little warm flicker in his chest that had little to do with the fire.

“What are you making?” She asked softly from beside him, staring at the fire as if the heat alone might sear any evidence of tears away.

“Lavender tea,” he groused, pouring the water into a mug lest the girl burn herself with impatience and reach for it too soon. “To help you sleep.”

She thought that over for a moment, then said, “Thank you.”

“Hmm.”

“You don’t say much, do you, Geralt?”

He didn’t answer, hoping that would be answer enough. But like Jaskier, the girl had a knack for filling a conversation by herself. The reminder of the bard panged oddly in his chest, ever so slightly. His lungs itched.

“That’s alright,” Ciri said. “Grandmother always says…” She paused, swallowed heavily, but pressed through it, “Said… a man’s word is nothing compared to his actions. You say a lot, Geralt, even if you don’t _actually_ say a lot.”

He didn’t really know what to think about that. Instead he let her babble until the tea, slowly but surely, lulled her back to sleep.

He tried not to think of how little he had left of that lavender tea. It was easier to rest, after all, once the girl had settled and fallen back asleep against his thigh, drooling on his trousers. He tried not to think about the strange feeling that struck inside him. Something warm and unfathomable in his breast, nearly soothing against the dreadful, creeping itch in his lungs. Tried not to think about what would happen if he didn’t get her to Kaer Morhen in time.

— • —

Standing before a cheap inn room mirror, he realized he was thinning. Not much, but enough to require him to dig a new hole in one of his belts. He’d have to be cautious, he thought as he dragged a shirt on to hide what he already knew. Cautious not to skip too many more meals. One or two did no harm, and he hadn’t thought he let it get so bad. Lose much more weight and his armor wouldn’t fit right. Ill-fitting armor got men killed, and he still had to get Ciri safely to Kaer Morhen.

He tried to eat more, but as time passed and the blossoms came more and more frequently, it became difficult to swallow. Sore and uncomfortable, what with the petals coming two at a time these days.

He turned, eyed Ciri still curled like a mouse in the middle of the inn bed. Wearing her clothes and her traveling cloak beneath the blankets because it was a cold night even with the fire crackling in the hearth. She looked so small. She was his to protect now, by Fate and whatever else.

And yet, even as Fate forced him to her, Death continued to dig into him as well. He wondered if the two ever bothered to communicate. Because only one of them would win at this rate – and he worried what would happen to Ciri when Death won.

All the more reason to get to Kaer Morhen.

All the more reason not to get attached.

He took the chair beside the bed, dug his bare feet beneath the blankets just enough to warm the worst of the chill from his toes, and went back to reading. For once, insomnia aided him. No point in trying to sleep. He’d just wake up coughing petals and scare the girl. It was easier to hold them at bay when awake. Easier to smother and ignore them, or at least find a discrete way to expel them.

He’d read instead. About beasts, about lore, about myths. The instinct of a witcher to keep their mind sharp and attuned to all that they hunt still prevalent even as he was dying.

— • —

It wasn’t until they were nearly halfway to Kaer Morhen that Ciri saw the petals for the first time. They came in threes now, sometimes fours. He didn’t answer when she asked about it. It was easy enough to distract her with something else she dogged him for relentlessly – like knife lessons or stories about his contracts. “Adventures”, she called them. Like he was the mythic protagonist of some elaborate and brave storybook rather than a man paid to kill what others were too human and too afraid to hunt themselves.

Jaskier would be livid if he knew how much Geralt willingly told Ciri. How easily and openly he spoke with her about things Jaskier had pressed and pressed and pressed for. But Geralt hadn’t been hiding death from Jaskier back then, not like he was with Ciri – his small, big-eyed child surprise who had already seen so much death. If things had been different – if he had been coughing up blossoms while with the bard – Jaskier would have been no less nosy about the petals… Geralt might even have told him those stories too, just as he was with Ciri, if it’d mean successfully deflecting the bard’s questions. Anything to avoid admitting he was dying.

Perhaps that was one thing to be grateful for, in losing him. Jaskier and Ciri together? He wouldn’t stand a chance.

— • —

Insomnia turned suddenly into a need for sleep so great, it startled him. He found himself taking Ciri to more and more inns, because when he slept, sound did little to wake him these days – and that was never a good habit for a witcher or a child in the woods. Or anyone, really.

He slept like a rock, sometimes only for a little while, sometimes until morning or nearly mid-day. And every time, he dreamed.

He woke with songs in his head and familiar scents – fine courtly oils and perfumes, and lilacs and gooseberries. The sharp smell of a man and the soft, round scent of a woman. He woke, mistaking each time that they would be there beside him and they weren’t. Confused and disoriented, his mind rendered fuzzy from sleep in a way it never used to.

Again, Ciri asked about the flower petals on Geralt’s pillow, in his hair, at the corner of his mouth. Again, she asked about Yennefer. About Jaskier.

Again, he didn’t answer.

They must ride, now more than ever, for Kaer Morhen. It would seem that Fate’s plan for him was this and this alone. Get the child to the safety of his kind. To train her as much as he could while they rode for the School of the Wolf. To prepare her as much as possible.

And by the gods, whichever gods there may or may not be, ensure Vesemir promised that the trials of transmutation never come within an inch of Ciri’s life.

— • —

“You were talking in your sleep again.”

He leaned up on an elbow to hack into his hand. What landed there felt more solid than a petal or two, but he didn’t bother to look. Not yet. He kept his hand closed, resting on his stomach as the fit passed, and sighed as he finally met Ciri’s gaze.

“And what did I say this time?” He asked, because she’d tell him regardless.

“Their names. Jaskier and Yennefer. Sometimes dandelion, something about gooseberries... I'm not sure... But... you did say that you were sorry.”

She had finally stopped asking who they were. Instead she just glared at him pointedly, as if he were being obstinately obtuse about something. Like a horse run too thin that wouldn’t drink, even when led to water.

Perhaps that’s what he was.

He cleared his throat, felt another petal come to his tongue. Spat it aside, too weary to be more hygienic or secretive than that. Ciri wrinkled her little button nose.

“Careful. Your face will get stuck like that,” he said, baiting her.

“Will not!”

And just like that, he twisted the conversation away again. If only it had been that easy with Jaskier or Yennefer. Maybe then, things wouldn’t have ended up the way they did.

She stomped off, growling something about food, and Geralt made certain only to smile when her back was to him. It felt… strange, to realize he was not going to die alone. Selfish and yet… appeasing. It made the petals a little easier to cough up.

He opened his hand as soon as he was certain she had well and truly left to find them food from the inn kitchen.

That strange feeling in his gut twisted sharply as he took in the sight of two full flowers – a lilac and a forget-me-not. Purple and blue, spattered with spittle and blood, but no less delicate or stunning. He had never known a witcher to vomit two blossoms before. Of course, trust him to be the lucky one to try it.

And yet, even knowing they were killing him, he couldn’t find it in him to crush them.

— • —

“If you miss them so much, why haven’t you gone off to find them?”

“I don’t miss them,” he groused on reflex. She just glowered at him. Evidently some of Geralt was rubbing off on her. He wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing, but regardless he tried not to think about how that made something in his chest twinge.

When she would not stop asking, he found himself begrudgingly answering with a petal-rough, “It’s complicated.”

“I don’t see what’s so complicated about it,” she huffed, crossing her arms and avoiding his gaze.

She was concerned for him, he realized. She seemed to think finding them would help, somehow. Perhaps take one last regret off his death bed. Well… two.

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” he found himself saying. She glared and refused to speak with him after that. Uncomfortable, but less so than acknowledging the fact that finding Yennefer or Jaskier to apologize was not, in fact, complicated. Simple, actually, and yet impossible. Impractical. Useless, really. Why would they ever agree to listen to anything he’d say, after… He shook the thought from his head.

They continued on to Kaer Morhen, and now and then he wondered what that would be like – apologizing. Finding them, explaining everything. Saying what he couldn’t atop that mountain because, despite the hundreds of ways he knew how to kill monsters, he didn’t know the words to fix what he had broken. He didn’t have so much as an inkling how. “I’m sorry” felt pale and useless. Underwhelming and thin. But he imagined it to pass the time; finding them. Explaining. But like most things in his life, it didn’t end well.

It seemed unfair that even his day dreams could be so scathing.

— • —

Ciri began to slip away from the inns while he slept. He didn’t notice at first. She got away with it for a day or two before he connected the dots. He wondered, how long had he slept? How long had she been out alone? He tried not to think about it, because he didn’t quite want to know how bad it had gotten. Plus, Ciri found him alone in the woods that fateful day. She had survived without him once before, and she’d need to be able to live without him once again when he finally passed. It was not necessarily a bad thing that she was beginning to take initiative for herself when he slept. Merely disconcerting to find the evidence of lost time.

He asked once what she had been up to.

She lied to him, so sweet and innocently, and Geralt felt a little less worried for her, for when he’d be gone. And as for proud, well… Best not to get attached.

— • —

There was talk of notes appearing in the towns, taverns and inns that led to Kaer Morhen. Slips of paper pierced to trees, left with inn keepers and barmen. But never stuck on job boards.

One note simply said:

> _Dandelion, Gooseberry, please come. We are headed home. He needs help, I think._

And another:

> _Come swiftly, he won’t listen to me._

And another still:

> _Gooseberry, Dandelion… he sleeps too much. He calls your names. I think he is dying of missing you. I’m afraid._

It had been months since they left for Kaer Morhen. Perhaps a month now, that these notes had begun appearing in the towns they’d stopped in. Some picked up and mocked by drunks. Others, blown away by the wind. It was one such note that Fate clung to. It drifted on the changing winds, slipping past trees and dogging the heels of horse hooves without being trampled. It went on a journey, much like Geralt and Ciri’s – a journey home.

A woman with inky hair snatched the little page from the air.

Purple painted nails stood a stark contrast against the torn, weathered page and young handwriting.

Lilac colored eyes read it over thrice, then thrice more.

Then Yennefer of Vengerberg looked out over the field she had been riding through, as if by will alone she might spot Geralt and his child surprise through miles of trees and towns and creatures. A sour wound ached inside her to think of him. It brought a bitter taste to her mouth.

 _I’m afraid_ , the child had written.

The child in Yennefer who had been sold sympathized with that. Fates be damned, but she did.

— • —

The bard found the note quite by chance. A note, brought to banquet by a noble who found it more a game than a plea – as though the note were some grand riddle for the party. Jaskier read the note as it passed around, and instead of adding in to the nobles’ very many predictions and guesses, he found himself slipping away.

He bartered for a horse, in doing so lost himself a rather lovely flask given to him as a lover’s gift, as well as much of his purse and a trinket or two. But he hit the road not long after reading the note. He needed to know if the witcher was alive. Needed to know what had become of him. While the note had been vague, he had no doubt it was about Geralt. That it was meant for him.

Geralt…

> _“Why is it that every time everything goes to shit, it’s you I turn to find standing there!”_

He shouldn’t. Even as his horse’s hooves took him ever steadily closer, he knew he should turn around and leave the witcher to his loneliness. Those words, like barbs inside his flesh, ached dreadfully. He rationalized it as being good for his career. Perhaps there’d be another song in it for him, he convinced himself, smothering his worry beneath that lie. No need to look too closely at ‘why’ he was going. Too late to trade the horse back now.

— • —

Geralt lost count of how many blossoms he began to expel throughout the day, even more at night when sleep left him powerless to obstinately smother them. He woke one night gasping, the flowers larger now. Suffocating, as though caught in a drowner’s clammy grip. Ciri pounded on his back. The relief of those thick flowers tumbling from his mouth quickly erased by the pain – howling like a banshee in his chest. He felt full, stuffed to the brim with flowers. So overwhelmed by them that he couldn’t move – couldn’t even begin to fathom how to express it.

And he realized suddenly, as he wiped petals and blood from his mouth as calmly as he could for Ciri’s sake, that this was not the first time he had felt smothered. Out of control. Helpless.

He had felt it twice before – just as painful and cloying – the moment he drove each of them away.

— • —

Inevitably, Yennefer and Jaskier found each other on the road. Barbed and falsely polite greetings turned into delicately shaped hedging conversations until finally, they could ignore it no further.

“So, what dangerous and thinly veiled lie are you weaving now? Do you ride to the location of your next mark? Eager to ensnare another knight to make king of some backwater, nowhere land?” Jaskier pried, curiosity buried beneath distaste and distrust. He remembered still the fight that had brought Geralt to the brink. He had often wondered, on his lonelier nights, if it had been that fight that had drove Geralt to those painful words… or if it truly had been him. It was easier to blame Yennefer.

“Cute, bard. Why yes, I am currently on my way to my next morsel,” she lied easily, grinning with all her teeth as she asked, “And what of you? Looking for a new ‘tall, dark and handsome’ to hide the fact that you are not the hero of yours or anyone’s story? That’s why you only sing of others, yes?”

Jaskier whistled, the sound itself lyrical as they rode along, still in the same direction.

“Wow. What did he see in you?” Jaskier asked, unable to help himself.

“The better question is what did _you_ see in _him_?” Yennefer shot back, “Are you so spineless a dog that you would let any handsome face beat you?”

“He did not beat me!”

“Not with his hands, no,” she agreed.

Jaskier scowled, a storm passing over his face. He broke first in the petty silence that followed.

“He asked for me, if you must know.”

“Oh, he did?” She purred, eyes twinkling darkly, “How amusing. He asked for me as well.”

“Because you bewitched him, no doubt.”

Yennefer sighed, eyes rolling as she quickly grew bored of him.

“Yes, because a bard has so much to offer an ailing witcher. No matter, we’ll see who he asked for when we get there. Separately, of course. Good luck, bard. I look forward to seeing if you make it,” she said before she urged her horse on, leaving Jaskier to scowl behind her.

— • —

Geralt dreamt of younger days.

He dreamt of Kaer Morhen. Of Vesemir. Before Yennefer or Jaskier or his child surprise. Before the trials. Before everything.

He remembered seeing a witcher, no older than thirty, being carried in on a stretcher. Evidently, he had died not far from home, just a town or two over, and had paid the villagers to have his body returned to Kaer Morhen. Not as though he needed the money anyway. What was more surprising was that the townsfolk had actually done it.

He arrived, pale and thin. In the crook of his neck and in the halo of his hair Geralt could remember seeing blossoms. Lilies. Beautiful and white against the body, making the corpse look not so much pale in death as ashen.

“This is the fate of witchers,” he remembered Vesemir telling him later by the fire. “We die by the sword, or by the fang… or else, Fate and Death comes for us themselves.”

“Why?” Geralt asked.

“There are many theories. No one bothered with any of them. It doesn’t matter, there is no cure. It comes for some of us early. Some, later. There’s no telling. Perhaps it is compensation for the gifts of a witcher… it comes for all of us, boy.”

“And always lilies?”

“…No. The flowers tend to differ.”

— • —

They met again, at an inn this time.

Seeing her there, framed by besotted men and women alike, Jaskier could hold back his ire no longer.

“Why are you going? I heard your little spat, there’s no love lost between you,” Jaskier asked, then – gesturing to her company – he spat, “And obviously you’re not dreadfully worried.”

When one of her men rose intimidatingly to his feet to address him, she easily waved him off – much to Jaskier’s surprise. She waited until her gathering left her before she answered. Leaving her with a table of wine and food that made Jaskier’s stomach cramp in jealousy.

“Oh? And I heard yours as well, bard. Have _you_ forgiven him?” Yennefer replied. Voice like spooled silk even as her eyes twinkled cleverly.

“Well, no, but…”

“Exactly.”

“…But would you? If he asked?” Jaskier pried.

A pause.

“Would you?”

Words surprisingly soft for a mage that had cleared a battlefield by sheer will alone.

“I don’t know, I… Yes. I think I would.”

“Why?”

Why… Jaskier thought that over. Why? He found himself thinking of what he had said to Geralt atop that mountain, before the witcher had banished him from his life.

> “ _I’m just trying to figure out what pleases me. Life is too short, after all.”_

“Because I think I finally know what I want… Now that I’ve lived without it.”

“Poetic,” Yennefer snorted.

“You’re avoiding the question, Yennefer.”

Something cold stole across her face. A quiet contempt that rivalled anything Geralt had ever directed his way.

“It’s never bade well for any man who’s tried to force me to do anything, Jaskier. You’d do well to heed that lesson while I offer it free of charge.”

“Is that why he’s called for us? Did you curse him?” Jaskier said, words tumbling from his mouth in a rage despite her warning.

“I will say this once and only once, bard. I did not bring harm down upon the witcher for what he did—”

“—and what did he do, Yennefer? Do you even know?” Jaskier exclaimed, nights of dread and overthinking boiling over inside his body.

She rose, and when the barkeep moved to break them up, it was a simple spell to persuade him they were doing nothing wrong at all. The inn collectively looked away from them. Suddenly, Jaskier felt far more like a mouse between a cat’s paws than a man on equal footing with his opponent. Even so, he held his chin up as high as he could manage.

“He wished my fate tied to his,” she snarled, “He stole my choice.”

“Because you had not stolen his before that? Forced him to terrorize a town?” Jaskier snapped, “Right? And the way I saw things go down, he saved your life!”

“I. Didn’t. _Ask_.” She said lowly, darkly, each word punctuated by a wealth of frustrations and experience that went far deeper than one argument. Far deeper than one witcher.

The tableware began to tremble. He should stop, but for some reason, he couldn’t.

“Yeah, well, show me your fucking shackles and I’ll see your way of things. Go on. Where are they? What has he demand you do?”

She clenched her jaw, but around her the tableware stilled.

“You think you’re so clever, bard, and yet here you are – alone. Perhaps he was right to banish you as he did.”

Jaskier stepped back at that, felt each word pierce his chest. But even as he knew she won, he could not help but part with one last thing.

“Perhaps,” he admitted, “But without a doubt he was fortunate that you lost your mind before you destroyed him with your venomous heart.”

He turned and left. Too awake to sleep, too wounded to eat. No need to rest, he’d keep riding. He might not be Yennefer of Vengerberg, he may not be helpful to Geralt in his hour of need. But he’d be damned if he let that woman beat him there.

— • —

Daydreams began to cling to Geralt, as though sleeping were not enough. Sometimes he thought he could hear the bard trailing his horse, strumming his lute or chattering idly. Sometimes, he’d even respond; dazed, too lost in the pleasantness of that false reality. Ciri always clung a little tighter to him, then.

He smelled lilacs and gooseberries always. Always, always, always. It crept up on him with the wind, with Ciri’s shifting in the saddle, whenever a blossom slipped past his lips. Even with Ciri’s concern, and her attempts to distract them both with childish questions and wonder and energy, the world felt entirely too silent. Silent like a grave, he thought once, chuckling feverishly – hadn’t this been what he wanted? Silence? Peace?

His heart panged. Another blossom threatened to rise.

He hummed a ditty Jaskier had once strummed about the tales of witchers and their lack of emotions.

> _"Curious was the dice Fate cast,_
> 
> _the heart she made for witchers._
> 
> _Aye, they say love comes to them last,_
> 
> _their hearts too cold and withered."_
> 
> _“Ha, but we know better, don’t we, you gentle giant?” Jaskier teased, breaking off his impromptu song. Geralt remembered the way Jaskier’s hands felt in his hair, how the oil rubbed into his back warmed the ache from his muscles. Kindness, where he only had barbs and broken conversations to offer in return._
> 
> _Kindness, and the sensation of suffocating – drawing breath, in and out, and yet unable to breathe so long as the bard looked at him that way, touched him like that…_
> 
> _“Hmm.”_

“What are you grunting about now, Geralt?” Ciri asked, her head heavy when she pushed it back against his chest to look at him behind her in the saddle as he was.

“…Nothing.”

“Hmm,” she mirrored back.

— • —

“Another letter, song bird,” Yennefer said, riding up beside him on the road from seemingly nowhere. Jaskier rolled his eyes to the heavens, forcing his face into a pleasant mask as she finally reached him.

“I have a name, you know,” the bard snapped from behind a polite smile.

Yennefer chuckled at that, a mirthful twinkle in her eye that made Jaskier on edge – and yet, the more he ran into her, the more and more he understood how addictive trading clever remarks with her could be, despite the venom.

“Yes. Evidently your name is Dandelion,” she purred, leaning toward him.

“Ah, yes, let’s play that game. Because _gooseberry_ is so much better!” He played along, just to see her rise to the occasion.

“Hush, do you want to read it or not?”

Their game came to a surprising halt, surprising enough for him to drop his antics and focus on the note instead. He read it over. Flipping it, in case there was any more on the back. Frowned.

> _Gooseberry, Dandelion… he sleeps too much. He calls your names. I think he is dying of missing you. I’m afraid._

He held the note between his fingers before he looked up to catch her gaze, their horses having come to a halt flank to flank.

“Why are you showing me this?”

She watched his face for a long moment, searching for something that made the bard shiver.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Partially I want to see how useful you might be. Partially because our prior spat revealed some… motivations for me. So perhaps it is also a token of gratitude, call it what you will.”

“Gratitude?” Jaskier gaped.

“Yes. I rode to Kaer Morhen before out of a debt for the life he saved that night with the Djinn, whether I asked for it or not. To bring closure to all of… _that._ But now I’ve realized I cannot let the witcher die until I have some answers. So I suppose if we both must save the witcher – well not _both,_ gods know what you think you’ll do – we might as well ride together instead of annoyingly surprising one another along the way. If you can muzzle your own fangs long enough to travel civilly.”

“Generous of you,” Jaskier snorted.

“I thought so, too,” Yennefer smiled, and again Jaskier was struck by the sudden understanding of how men so easily became ensnared by this woman. He vowed he wouldn’t be even as something shivered down his spine.

And yet, despite their mutual loathing, they continued on in the same direction and did not part again.

— • —

Geralt sat by a fire wrapping the gashes a stray griffin had managed to land on him when a coughing fit had made him - for just a moment - stagger. In the end, it hadn't mattered. The griffin had fallen all the same. But even so, the wound stung. A reminder of his words with Jaskier. _When do witchers retire? When they slow._

He startled from his thoughts with a grunt when Ciri suddenly slipped from her bedroll, coming over and silently pressing against his flank. He had no more lavender tea to offer. Hadn't for some time. But still she came to sit with him some nights. Sometimes she spoke, sometimes she didn't. Regardless, this time began to grow on him. More and more, he found it bordering on... pleasant.

"You scared me," she finally whispered, eyes on his hands as he worked the bandage around his forearm. Watching – learning, he realized. Memorizing what he was doing in case she might need to step in one day. He hummed at that. Felt the warmth in his chest flicker and constrict strangely.

"Griffins are intimidating, but I doubt we'll see another on our way to Kaer Morhen," he said, trying to soothe her. “We’re almost there.”

No need to mention that while there would be no more Griffins, there would be plenty of bears. The lands that led to Kaer Morhen were infested with them by the dozens.

"That's not what I meant and you know it."

He nearly flinched. He did, he did know. He finished with the bandage before finally stretching out, warming his feet near the fire.

"I don't want to watch anyone else die because of me," she whispered. He could feel her tremble against his side. Knew it wasn't because of the cold. "I don't want to lose anyone else."

Despite every instinct of his training that screamed for him to keep his distance, to no get attached, he gently brought an arm around Ciri's shoulders and said, "I know..."

And not for the first time, he wished he had something better to say.

— • —

Despite Geralt's cruel words, even now Jaskier could not tolerate endless silence. He traded barbs with his traveling companion, or at least, it started that way. But slowly barbs turned into idle chatter. Idle chatter drew out into passionate judging of various courtly men and ladies. Stories of parties gone wrong, banquets gone strange, wild nights. And even, eventually, tales about themselves.

As days passed, Jaskier found that jagged edge of contempt for Yennefer softening inside him. Steadily, like a grind stone, each day peeling another layer from him. He sang songs to cheer her up, some even about her. Listened as slowly Yennefer offered small bits of herself to him one piece at a time. Tiny, fragile bits that slowly began to make a picture the more of them he collected.

And likewise, he exposed himself as well. Not all at once, not knowingly. But one day they rode and Jaskier realized that they had not once said something venomous to one another. Sharp, cutting sarcasm - sure. But nothing more. The more he knew of her, the more he understood what had driven Geralt and Yennefer apart. What had terrified the woman so dearly as to flee him like that.

At night, they shifted from a fire between them to resting flank to flank. To seeking refuge in another warm body. The sought comfort and warmth at night and during the day, they made a marry match wringing coin from inns along the way - just enough to eat and be on their way. At first it was nothing more than that. 

Until a man laid hand on him at a tavern kitchen just as he was going to order food and drink for them both.

"Don't I know you from somewhere, boy?" The beast of a man asked, towering over Jaskier enough to make him gulp. He flashed the man a nervous smile.

"No, I don't think I've had the pleasure," he stammered, trying to free his hand without making a scene. "Just passing through, you see."

The man didn't let him free. Instead he loomed forward, squinting at him, cheeks rosy with drink. Breath hot and sour.

"But you've had the pleasure of my wife, haven't you?"

"No," Jaskier wheezed, but it was too late. The man, regardless of its truth, had fastened to the assumption like a dog with a bone. Were it a court affair, he might not have been wrong – but a backwater village like this? Jaskier was certain he had never even been here before.

"Aye! She described you. Scrawny boy of a man! You piece of shit, you--" he drew his hand back, high over his shoulder. His fist was balled up more like a mallet than any human hand, in Jaskier's humble opinion. He closed his eyes and tried to shield himself as best he could, one hand still caught in the meaty vice of the other's grip. He waited for the blow to land.

But it never did.

"You'll let my traveling companion go," Yennefer said, appearing from behind the large man, a strange glow to her hands and her eyes - subtle, yet dangerous. "You'll hand us your purse as a token of humility for ruining our peaceful rest here at this establishment. And then you'll go home to your wife and ask her why she let another man lay with her. I promise you'll find it enlightening."

"A-aye," the man said, releasing Jaskier's bruised wrist to relieve himself of his purse – eyes dull and movements slow, like when Geralt would use Axii on bandits. Jaskier watched numbly as the man did as he was bid and disappeared. 

"Incredible," Jaskier mumbled, then – eyes flitting to Yennefer to ask her why she had helped – he felt time slow as a man drew up beside her. He had a knife in his hand. He'd obviously not taken well to the open display of magic, and while most of the patrons had been content to look away and let sleeping dogs lay, this man evidently couldn't resist the opportunity to avenge his friend.

Jaskier grabbed the neck of his lute as he called to her. Watched as she spun to see the man coming, hands rising, but not before Jaskier had his lute up and swinging through the air. It arced above her, it's wooden body crashing against the man's skull. It made an awful racket. He heard a telling crunch. And then Yennefer took the man's surprise to send a force of will against him, throwing him across the inn and through a table. 

Jaskier's chest heaved. His hand trembled around the neck of his lute, the strings cutting into his palms. He could feel that several had come loose.

"We should go, I think," he said, voice shaky, high off the thrill of the fight.

"Indeed," she said, and when she turned back to him, her eyes were alight in a curiously beautiful way.

They didn't stay in that town, but they left it with a heavier coin purse. And as they rode off, Jaskier lamented the death of his lute – Its barreled body cracked and warped.

"A noble death for a noble lute," he crowed dramatically, "Rest well, my sweet friend."

Yennefer eyed him and the lute curiously, something masked in the gesture before she finally asked, "Would you like for me to fix it?"

His gaze shot up, skeptical and yet...

"Would you?"

She watched him a moment, then nodded.

"When we stop for the night, I shall fix it."

"I... thank you."

She hummed. "For the lute or for saving your ass?"

"The lute, well, both I guess, I -- _why did_ you save my lovely ass, by the way?"

She shrugged.

"No one touches my bard," she said. He grinned at that, something that had been dull and weak in his chest for so long flickering with a little spark and heat. "Plus, if you can fight like that, I see why Geralt called for you. I can't simply show up alone, can I? He called for us both."

"The _girl_ called for us both," he clarified, still unsure of how Geralt would react when he saw them. "But I... I'm honestly not sure how I'll help. I can hardly swing my lute at every problem."

"Oh? Your lute saved Geralt from his reputation. Saved me from a knife, though I'd likely have stopped it," she grinned, eyes twinkling as she looked at him. "I think you're a lot more useful than you give yourself credit for these days, dandelion."

Jaskier smiled as they fell into an easy banter, eagerly joining Yennefer in her biting comments about the men who had tried to attack them and no doubt the size of their manhood – “I bet the two of their cock-lengths together can’t out do our witcher, don’t you think, dandelion?” – and it reminded him of the joy of traveling with another.

He wondered what it might be like in a group of four. The thought awoke a sleepy, distant hope.

— • —

Geralt barely made it to Kaer Morhen.

The estate had just begun to creep up from over the hill and tree line when he felt his throat swell fiercely, worse than before. Thick and bulging. He could feel them in his neck, clogged and demanding release. He wheezed through petals and short stems. In the saddle before him Ciri stirred from her nap – twisting just in time to see Geralt dip from the saddle and fall with a loud thump and nothing more.

She scrambled down from the horse. Babbled fearfully to Roach, her hands tiny and cold against him as she beat his back, tried to force him breathe.

He vomited a handful of blossoms onto the road that led home. Three full retches of lilacs and forget-me-nots and blood. When the last blossom left his lips, he sucked in a ragged breath of air. It agitated his lungs, and when he coughed next, petals and blood followed.

He could hear Ciri crying, distant beneath the roaring of blood and dread in his ears.

The edges of his vision grew ashen and blurry.

He never apologized, he realized. He never saw either of them again. Yennefer... Jaskier...

The blossoms crowding his lungs shivered like reeds in a stiff wind.

He barely saw Roach nibbling and pulling at Ciri’s collar. Leading her away.

He barely saw the road when it rushed up to greet his face.

— • —

Two travelers stopped their horses just outside the touring outline of Kaer Morhen. The anxious stomping of their mares’ hooves cast the little pile of blood dappled flowers that caught their attention to drift idly in the middle of the road.

“Lilacs and forget-me-nots... A shrine, you think?” Jaskier asked.

“In the middle of the road? Unlikely.”

Jaskier followed her gaze to the towering estate ahead.

“Is that Kaer Morhen?” He asked.

“Hmm… yes, dandelion. It is.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” He asked. Even as he knew.

Yennefer was searching inside herself for that thread of Fate she was certain Geralt had cursed her with. Searching constantly for the answer to one question – was this her will or the will of a witcher’s wish? Whatever answer she found, it must have been enough to push her forward. When she urged her horse along, Jaskier did not comment. He merely followed, grateful that she had.

Whatever was wrong with Geralt, it was unlikely that Jaskier would be able to fix it. As much as he was flattered to have been included in the note, he knew it was Yennefer that mattered.

He knew that had he not come, he would have easily been forgotten.

— • —

Geralt woke in the middle of hurried orders and frantic hands, lashes fluttering weakly as he tried to open his eyes fully. He was shuffled and rolled from a stretcher to a bed. The room was warm, covered in shelves and cabinets, all glimmering with bottles and herbs and tinctures. He knew this room. He’d been here before.

A weathered hand brushed white hair from his sweaty brow, then plucked a blossom from the corner of his mouth. Geralt’s breath whistled harshly as people scattered, all with their individual orders from Vesemir.

“The girl?” Geralt croaked. His throat burned viciously.

“Safe. She’s safe.”

Three words. Three words, and he let self-control – what little he had of it – slip from him like the strings of a puppet suddenly cut. He melted into the mattress, keen to enjoy that simple comfort now that his task was done. He waited for Fate to release its hold on him. To feel that final tether cut, his body free of this place.

He waited. And waited. And must have muttered something confused and pained about it, because Vesemir merely placed a damp cloth to his forehead and said, “Not yet, lad. Not yet.”

— • —

Vesemir sat at Geralt’s bedside, twirling the stems of two flowers between thumb and forefinger: a lilac and a forget-me-not. He watched them dance, drying out now from the heat of the room. After a moment he finally set them aside to look at the man that occupied Kaer Morhen’s sickbed.

The white wolf, while still towering and broad, looked so small in that bed. Even as his feet did not quite get spared from hanging over its end, he looked small. Young. Like a boy again, almost. Or perhaps that was just the wistfulness in Vesemir.

He had never seen a witcher expel two blossoms before.

Trust Geralt of Rivia to surprise him.

— • —

A small girl stood at the gate to Kaer Morhen as though she alone could protect every soul inside. Her little hands were fisted at her sides, tears in her eyes. She appeared ready to scream, of all things.

“Is that… a little girl? I thought they only took boys here?”

“Yes, dandelion, your powers of observation continue to astound.”

Hostility melted from the girl like snow thawing. Her hands unclenched. Her teary eyes, if possible, seemed to glimmer with further moisture. As though she had waited through the night only to finally see dawn.

“Dandelion? Gooseberry?” She asked, voice warbling despite how she tried to be brave.

“Aye, child.”

“You found my letters.”

“Letters is a bit of a strong word—ow!” Jaskier yelped, cradling the arm Yennefer had pinched.

“Where is he?” Yennefer asked.

Ciri didn’t say another word. She took off running. And despite their courtly demeanors, Yennefer and Jaskier followed – running.

— • —

“What did this to him?” Yennefer asked, watching Geralt hack deliriously as Vesemir eased him toward the side of the bed where the blood, petals and blossoms might fall harmlessly. He looked thin. Like a starved wolf.

“Nothing,” Vesemir said once the fit had passed, easing the feverish man back into the pillows, eyes already closed. “This is the way of witchers. We die to the blade, or the fang, or this.”

“No, that’s… no,” Jaskier stumbled, searching for any line to hang onto. “Surely there’s a cure?”

“A cure I simply haven’t given him yet?” Vesemir asked dryly, brow raised.

“How has word of this never spread?” Yennefer asked instead. “Have you sought council anywhere?”

“Very few care enough for witchers to be concerned for how they die,” Vesemir said. Jaskier and Yennefer both grew quiet, unable to call it a lie. Not when the bard had spent so long trying to fix that very reputation. Not when Yennefer knew first hand it was true. They’d both been to more than one town affixed with signs warning witchers not to pass through.

“What do we do?” Jaskier croaked.

Vesemir quietly got up to leave, then as he passed brought a hand up to Jaskier’s shoulder, squeezed it, and left. The meaning was clear. Say your goodbyes, find your closure – while there’s still time.

— • —

He dreamt of a bed that had Yennefer and Jaskier both in it. He dreamt of them at either side of him. Yennefer’s fingers tracing his face, his scars. Jaskier’s hands in his hair, rubbing the aches from his shoulders, his back. Sometimes a small hand found his and held it firmly, as if it alone could lead him home.

Everything smelled of lilacs, gooseberries and forget-me-nots.

And occasionally, of Ciri.

— • —

“We could find another Djinn. Wish him better. Or wish him to be human!”

Yennefer spun on him and were Geralt not cradled so weakly in the bard’s arms, her glare might have been more furious. She growled, “No Djinn.”

“Sensitive,” the bard muttered. She thought about hurting him. He was lucky Geralt was in his lap. “Then what… there’s nothing?”

“There’s never _nothing_ ,” Yennefer murmured, returning to her pacing, fingers flipping through one of many books she had taken from Kaer Morhen’s shelf to no avail. “Merely the unexplored, the unexplained.”

“His nails are blue, Yennefer,” Jaskier said weakly.

“I’m aware,” she snapped.

When the bard didn’t rise to the bait, instead focused on fussing over the limp witcher in his lap – trying to warm Geralt’s blue tinged fingers between both of his palms – then, worry bled into fear. Then, Yennefer felt helpless.

— • —

Geralt called for them in his sleep.

It made the bard ache to hear his name said like that. Jaskier whined like the puppy he was, eager to return to his master even after he was struck. It made Yennefer sick to watch, knowing what the witcher had said to the bard. She scowled, that sour taste back in her mouth.

Geralt called for her, too.

It made Yennefer furious. What right had he to mourn her name after what he did? And yet, she could not make herself leave. Not when she still didn’t know if Fate had forced her life to this point or not. Not when she still didn’t know what he had wished…

And yet still she came to him when he called for her. For reasons she could not explain she soothed him as best she could. Perhaps she was no better than the bard. Perhaps they both wanted nothing more than an easy excuse to forgive, before it was too late.

Hard to hate the witcher when he was dying, curled weak between them.

— • —

Yennefer left. To do what, she had barely tried to describe and Jaskier had barely tried to understand. He stroked limp hair from Geralt’s brow. Ran a cloth over the worst of the man’s fever. He burned like a summer’s day, nearly downright uncomfortable against Jaskier’s skin when he touched him.

“Sorry this is the best that I can offer right now. A rag is nothing compared to Yennefer's gifts, but I can’t very well go writing songs about this, Geralt,” he said as cheerfully as he could muster, as though nothing were wrong. As if Geralt only had a cold. As if the man weren’t dying. “Not unless you have a happily-ever-after planned. Otherwise, I’ll get run out of any bar I sing at.”

He waited for the grunt he had gotten used to, even after so long without the man. Waited for a baleful glare, anything. Geralt just kept wheezing, the sound getting threadier and threadier. Hitching and weak.

The silence drew his false bravado to an exhausted halt. Stirred an ancient ache in the face of more of Geralt’s famous silence.

“I should hate you,” Jaskier whispered. “I want to hate you so much. You know, I thought this would go a lot differently. I used to sit up at night thinking about what I’d say when I saw you again. Had a lot clever words for you too. Now I can’t use them, you bed-ridden bastard. Hardly sporting…”

He pinched Geralt, just to see if he would wake, then immediately felt guilty for it.

“I should hate you,” he mumbled, fingers tracing a scar near the skin he had pinkened with his pinch. “The things you said to me… and I did, for a long time, I think. I did hate you. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt bad for you, Geralt. Everyone says witchers can’t feel, but… I think you can. I think you can, and even you lot fell for that wives’ tale, and now you just don’t know what to do with it all. Bit like a child,” Jaskier laughed weakly. “An overgrown, dual-sword wielding child… I haven’t forgiven you. Not yet. And I won’t, if you die, I won’t. I demand a proper apology. So, you better fucking get better, Geralt of Rivia, or I’ll…”

Jaskier blew out a breath, suddenly tired, the fight fleeing him. He took Geralt’s hand, gaze caught where his thumb stroked calloused skin.

“You just better,” he whispered lamely, at a loss for words. 

Geralt didn’t answer, so Jaskier filled the silence as best he could. He sang, hoping it lead the witcher home. He'd take a snide comment relating his music to filling-less pie any day if it meant Geralt would live. So he sang. He filled the silence as best he could and waited for Yennefer, feeling helpless all the while.

> _"Curious was the dice Fate cast,_
> 
> _the heart she made for witchers._
> 
> _Aye, they say love comes to them last,_
> 
> _their hearts too cold and withered._
> 
> _But alas, I saw a witcher love,_
> 
> _when he thought no one was looking._
> 
> _Spared a smile for naught but just his horse,_
> 
> _and whispered kindness when she whickered."_

— • —

“How much time do we have?” Yennefer asked, finally cornering Vesemir.

“It’s hard to say,” Vesemir admitted. “…not long.”

The words hurt more than Yennefer thought they would. Far more, in fact. For if her fate were tied to his, or her heart relentlessly forced to love him, she should feel relief that his suffering would soon be over. Peace, maybe. Sadness, of course, but not the bitter sort she had lodged up in her chest. It was nothing like the mourning of besotted widowers. No. It was an ugly, cold, twisted sort of sadness. The sour remnants of a relationship that could have been, but went unfulfilled. And there, beneath it, hatred for ever having wished for something that would tie the two of them together. If she were forced to love him, would she be able to feel that hate? Should it even be possible?

What had he wished for?

Soon, she’d never know. Unless she asked.

— • —

It was a simple spell to lure Jaskier asleep. Simpler still to use a collection of herbs from the witchers’ pantry to wake Geralt, if only for a moment. She had never seen a witcher’s eyes so hazy. He appeared barely able to recognize her.

“Yen?” he croaked, sounding as if he expected her to be a mirage rather than a flesh and blood woman. Something in her panged at that. There were petals at the corner of his mouth again. Lilacs.

“What did you wish for, Geralt?”

His brow furrowed, then warped into something she had not expected to see – regret.

“I’m sorry, Yennefer,” he rasped, the words ruined by hacking that echoed in his chest, ugly and painful.

“Geralt, please,” she said, grabbing his face to focus him as the fit passed, “I must know.”

“I couldn’t let you go,” he whispered madly, eyes distant as she rubbed his face, tilted his gaze to her, did anything to keep him with her.

“You bound me,” she repeated, urging him to confirm her fears, her anger, “Tied my fate to yours.”

Would she die if he did, she wondered? Would the flowers come for her, too? They should, were their fates tied, and yet… she was fine.

“Couldn’t let you die.”

There was something urgent in the amber of his eyes as he said that. Something unidentifiable and yet so familiar. It drew her breath to a pause; the intimacy of it frightening.

“What did you wish for, Geralt?” She repeated.

He chuckled, eyes rolling weakly, tiredly. She urged his attention back to her with her hands, the softness of her fingers, a hint of magic.

“Geralt.”

“I wished,” Geralt babbled weakly, easily lost in each word. She was losing him. Frustration boiled in her gut. “I wished…”

As his head lolled in her hands, a voice startled Yennefer like a sudden noise might make a cat arch its back. She twisted to look behind her, surprised to find Ciri there in the doorway, watching them, as she said, “He wished Fate give you a second chance.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed at the little girl. She eased Geralt back into the pillows and asked, “He told you this?”

“He talks in his sleep.”

A second chance…

“A second chance at what?”

“I don’t know… life?” Ciri asked, shrugging.

A second chance at life. A second chance to live her life, a life where the Djinn hadn’t killed her. It would mean their encounters had been by chance, their feelings by chance, their… Their fight by chance. Why had he not said? Why not merely say what his wish had been?

Because… a wish uttered again after having been asked was no longer a wish. How many children refused to tell their wishes due to that fear? A childish fear perhaps made all too real by the risk if it were true, they’d lose everything. And, unable to tell her the truth, would she have believed him had he denied tying their fates together without admitting what he had actually wished for?

“You moron,” she snarled beneath her breath, unsure as to who it was for. Him? Herself?

Why would a witcher who hated Fate ever wish to tie her to himself? Why would a witcher who had no choice in his own occupation, his own life, ever steal that from another? Ever steal that from her, a woman who spent her life making up for the decisions that had been taken from her?

She stood suddenly, moving for the door.

“Where are you going?” Ciri asked, startled. And yet, surprisingly, she didn’t move from the doorway. Blocking it, as slight as she was, like a bulldog.

Yennefer considered her question, considered her bravery, and despite her ire at being held up, found a certain fondness spreading in her for Geralt’s child surprise. For the child he had gotten, but she could never have.

“To try and find a cure.”

Her little mouth pursed at that, conflicted. She balled up her fists.

“You better come back,” she finally said.

“I will,” she promised.

“He’s worse when he misses you two,” Ciri explained, as though Yennefer didn’t understand the stakes.

“I will be back before he wakes,” she said, without regard as to whether or not that was possible.

Ciri just nodded at that and stepped aside. As Yennefer passed, she found herself pausing, looking down on the pale little head that had become the witcher’s shadow.

“Take care of him for me while I’m gone, won’t you?”

She glared up at her at that, mouth twisted as she said, “ _I have been!_ ”

Yennefer just smiled, more and more smitten with this little firecracker of a girl.

Thank Fate Geralt had her with him. Otherwise…

Yennefer refused to dwell on it.

— • —

Yennefer showed the two blossoms to many people. Anyone she dared share audience with and a few, even, she should not have. Witchers kept their secrets well, it would seem. No affluent mage she knew of had an answer. Deals and bargains and lies, plenty – but no truthful cure.

She stood on a cliffside overlooking the sea, salty air whipping her hair, as she tried to come to terms with the knowledge that she was too late. Too late to find a cure. Too late in realizing Geralt was an emotionally constipated man-baby prone to fretful wives’ tales and childish beliefs about wishes. Too late in understanding that she had wasted her chance to spend his wish with him.

“Yennefer of Vengerberg?”

She turned slowly, exhausted and hollowed out, to see a woman standing behind her on the bluffs. A plain looking woman, no doubt a humble village witch. Simple, barely talented. It took only one look to see that she was more kind than she was skilled.

“Who asks?”

“Maria,” she said gently, then smiled softly as she said, “Fate bid me finish sending you on your way.”

She stilled at that. Were it not for the honest kindness in the woman’s eyes, she might have thought it a threat. Still did, in a way.

“Send me where?”

“Home,” she said, “To your second chance.”

— • —

Jaskier felt he might vomit as he watched the witcher convulse, mouth full of flowers. He did as Vesemir had taught him and eased the man onto his side so the flowers pose less a risk of choking him. He didn’t realize he was crying as he babbled to soothe the witcher, to soothe himself. Anything to smother the terrible sound of Geralt’s wheezing.

“It’s okay,” he said, over and over, “Yennefer will figure it out. We’ve got you. It’s okay.”

A hot hand grabbed his forearm, so weak for the man Jaskier once saw split a creature clean in half with one slash of his sword. He could feel the heat of Geralt’s fever through his shirt.

“Jaskier,” Geralt croaked, voice so ragged now that to call it a whisper would have been generous.

“Yes? Geralt?” Jaskier asked, eager for his friend to be awake after so long feverish and asleep. “Do you need something?”

“Not a dream?” Geralt rasped.

“No, Geralt. It’s not a dream.”

“You’re here?”

His confusion drew Jaskier’s gut to a tight knot.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Need to… tell you….” He murmured urgently, but already his eyes were closing.

Geralt grew still and limp, asleep once more, hand still clutching Jaskier’s forearm. The bard pat that hand, then reached to grab the cool rag. He ignored the way his hand shook. Vesemir watched from the doorway. Silent and as close to mournful as witchers ever tended to look.

— • —

Yennefer ran her horse ragged, once again cursing the barriers that prevented her from teleporting into Kaer Morhen. Her horse’s breath sent large, hot plumes out into the cold night. It beat a steady thrum into the ground.

She willed Fate get her there in time. Willed Geralt hold on.

— • —

She found him canted over the side of the bed, Vesemir and Jaskier both holding him up as he purged flowers onto the ground, adding to a little heap already there and growing – fresh, splattered with little drops of red.

His arm shook fiercely where it braced him up on the bed. There was no cognizance in his eyes, just suffering – feverish, confused and pained. Ciri cried, curled in the corner, too afraid to move, too attached to leave.

Yennefer knelt beside his flowers, hands cradling his face even as Vesemir bade her leave him be. That he might choke. His throat bulged with regret and pining. Flowers tumbled from his lips. But when she called his name, forcing will into the word, he opened his eyes to look at her. Glazed, aching. Wanting relief in any form – be it cure or death.

She wiped a petal from the corner of his mouth. Her heart ached as he leaned into her hands.

“You wished for a second chance for me,” she said. Something akin to clarity cut into his eyes.

“Yennef—” another plume of lilacs spilled from his mouth. His body shook with the effort of purging the blossoms, now fully flowers. She could count his ribs, less than his scars and yet nearly more striking.

“So you cannot die,” she said fiercely, forcing him to look at her, “Because I’ve decided I want you to be part of my second chance, Geralt of Rivia. You are mine. Ours,” she said, looking pointedly at the bard.

“Yennefer, now is not the—“Jaskier started, but Vesemir cut him off with a hand over the bard’s mouth, eyes wide as he asked, “You know what this is?”

Yennefer did not answer him. There was no time.

“I love you, Geralt of Rivia,” she said, and then she kissed him. His lips were chapped, his skin hot and clammy. She could feel petals on her lips. He reeked of flowers and death. And yet, in her hands, his jaw ceased some of its shaking. She pulled back to find some cognition return to his eyes.

“Yenn—” He began, relief somewhere in the words before forget-me-nots took their place, landing in her lap harmlessly.

“Jaskier,” she said, drawing the bard’s attention, “Our conversation from before… Have you forgiven him or not?”

“I have, but I’m no magician, Yen, I can’t—”

“You can. In fact, only you can.”

He stared at her with owlish eyes, then scrambled to action all at once, limbs thin and lanky as he twisted himself uncomfortably to reach Geralt’s face. He brushed petals and blood from the corners of the man’s mouth and took in the face of the man who had been, for so long, larger than life. This man who had wounded him with words and blame and barbs.

_“I need… to tell you…”_

Geralt had never finished… but he didn’t need to. Not yet, at least.

“I love you,” Jaskier said, eyes caught on feverish amber ones. “I have always loved you.”

A second kiss. In Yennefer’s lap and in the pile beside her, one by one the flowers turned to dust. In the bed, in Geralt’s hair, in his cloths. All of them faded – disappearing as though they had never been.

As Jaskier pulled away Geralt let out a soft, relieved sigh, finally free of his wheezing. It was his first clear breath in months. And with it, his eyes closed – not in weariness or pain, but relief. He all but melted into the bard’s arms, startling the man before Yennefer could calm him.

“He’s fine, dandelion,” she said, her hand seeking Geralt’s from beside the bed. “He’ll be fine.”

“How did you…?” Vesemir trailed off, shocked. Ciri slipped past him, worming her way onto the bed to clutch at Geralt, curl into him, hide her face.

“We need to have a talk about your clan’s opinion of feelings, Master Witcher,” Yennefer said politely, words professional even as her eyes howled angrily. “And how it’s killing you all. But we’ll do that all in good time.”

And then she made room for herself on the crowded bed, needing to touch her witcher, her bard, her child-surprise. Because anything that was Geralt’s was now hers, and she felt in her marrow those strings of Fate fettering them all together. The strings she had chosen; anchoring and taut.

— • —

Death of the Pining Flowers, Hanahaki, the Pining Petals, the disease of the lonely, the Witcher’s Blight… it had many names and yet, few stories and fewer cures. The result of love not returned. Rare but for those who could not move on, and even then, it rarely took hold. But for witchers, children taken from their mothers and raised to ignore their emotions, it was a breeding ground for suffering. The more they smothered what they could not understand, the more they buried, the more it grew and festered like seeds in soil until it made gardens of their bodies – their hearts, assumed to be hollow by the training and trials that made them, filled with the proof that witchers could, in fact, feel. Petals upon petals of proof.

So full of feelings, in fact, that it killed them.

Cured only when those feelings were returned.

To think, they had almost lost their witcher to petals.

— • —

“You came,” he said to Yennefer, his hands curled in her hair as she lay beside him.

“Hmm.”

She did it to prove a point, and he found it both amusing and frustrating.

“Yen,” Jaskier said from Geralt’s other side, “Be nice, the man just spent months coughing up flowers because he loved you so much.”

Geralt _blushed_ and looked distinctly uncomfortable. Yennefer and Jaskier shared a knowing smirk – they’d have to teach their wolf to accept such things, the poor, emotionally stunted bastard.

She hummed at that again, her gaze moving from Jaskier to Geralt as she said, “Yes, I came.”

“Why?”

“Does it matter?” She asked.

“Yes.”

She leaned back into the pillows at that, eyes lifting to count the beams in the ceiling.

“I hated you… but that didn’t mean I could just sit back and watch you die, either. At first, that was enough, but… I already admitted my love to you, Geralt, how often are you going to demand I reaffirm it? Ask your bard, he’ll sing it for you, I bet.”

Geralt grunted, something close to a chuckle, as he turned to Jaskier.

“And you… why did you come?” And in this he nearly sounded more uncertain. With Yennefer, their parting had been a misunderstanding. With Jaskier… It was not so clean.

“The gooseberry nailed it, Geralt,” the bard said.

“Call me gooseberry again and I’ll remove one of _your_ gooseberries, bard.”

Jaskier continued on as if she hadn’t just threatened his manhood. Their familiarity stunned Geralt. Jaskier had not paled at all at the threat. If anything, he smiled.

“But for me, I guess… I never hated you, Geralt. Hated what you said, how you treated me? Yes. But you? …How could I stay away?” Jaskier finally said. He should have though, Geralt could not help but think.

“Jaskier,” Geralt said, slow and unsure of how to tread, what words to say, “I need to tell you. I…”

He stuttered. His guts coiled, his instincts screaming. Feelings got you killed. He’d miss something, he’d get killed, get them all killed, he’d—

Jaskier waited. Strangely patient.

“I’m… sorry,” Geralt said, the words just as choking as the flowers had been, making him shudder even as he felt relief for finally having said it. Like cleaning the grit from an old wound, sore but finally healing.

“Well that certainly took a lot out of you,” Jaskier said dryly, one brow arched.

Geralt hung his head, torn between instinct and his lame apology.

“I’m sorry,” he said more firmly. “I… the things I said, none of it was true. You didn’t ruin my life. I did. When I pushed both of you away.”

“Good boy,” Yennefer purred from beside him, patting his shoulder. Making Geralt scowl ever so slightly as Jaskier chuckled, pecking the corner of his mouth.

“Stale, but oddly generous, for a witcher. That’s practically a speech in witcher, isn’t it, Yen?”

“As close to as one as we’ll get, I think.” She chuckled.

“You’re both insufferable,” Geralt groused with no real heat.

“Glad to see you’re feeling better, then,” Jaskier grinned.

“Though I’d prefer a little _more_ better,” Yennefer said, her chin on Geralt’s chest as she looked between her two men, “So we might _all_ feel better _together._ ”

Geralt grunted, caught between two grinning foxes. Suddenly not alone, suddenly caught with two lovers.

“The girl’s asleep in the chair,” he cautioned, both grateful and mournful about it.

“As I said, when you’re _more_ better _,_ ” Yennefer pointed out. “It can wait. We’ve got nothing but time, after all.”

Fate thrummed in the threads that connected them all together, strong and soothing. And for once, Geralt found comfort in that.

For once, he found peace.


	2. Recover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, this time there's smut. Rating has changed, yada yada, look away if you don't wanna see Yennefer and Jaskier domming Geralt.
> 
> Also...
> 
> no beta we die like men. particularly toward the end. I'll come back and properly edit the end at some point. That sex scene is messy both narratively and grammatically. Oops. Welp, off to the trash from whence I came.

For all her long years, Yennefer had always assumed that a witcher’s proclivity to accelerated healing came purely from their trials and mutations. Sterility in compensation for longevity. Even now as she traced a faint, gnarled pock mark of a scar on Geralt’s shoulder idly, she remembered the first night she had ever laid eyes on it. How it had been hot and puffy under her fingers as she traced its edges, lying in bed with him one night after having rendezvoused at some nowhere inn. She had been high from a newly found boon of research and he had been freshly bathed after a contract done exceedingly well, his purse unusually heavy.

She remembered how the gash had been barely closed and somewhat weeping when they started, although the witcher didn’t seem bothered by it at all except for a hiss through his teeth here and there when he moved it just slightly more than he ought to have. They had their fill of each other, supping from the cup of one another’s company and victory, and by morning the wound had closed. Puffy still, but it looked more like a gash three days along rather than hours. She remembered being fascinated. At the time she had wondered what, if anything, could keep a witcher down. It was thrilling to bed a creature as tailored by human machinations as herself. Thrilling, comforting even, to be known by someone so intimately familiar with that very distinctive existence, that pain. Like hearing the pitch of a string plucked that matched the sound of your own heartbeat, vibrating in your bones.

But now, the more she was left to suffer with a bedridden Geralt, the more she wondered if a witcher’s inclination toward swift recovery was not in fact simply a blessing from the gods to spare both witchers and the mortal world from their impatience and bullheadedness. Surely they’d all be dead, if not. Particularly Geralt.

She sat at his side, her back cushioned by pillows and the headboard as she took her time perusing the world-weathered pages of one of the Kaer Morhen’s very many bestiaries. Despite the white wolf’s restlessness, he was not recovering from his weeks-long stint of suffering as quickly as he or any of them hoped. Vesemir had mentioned more than once that Geralt was the first known case of a witcher surviving what they referred to as a ‘witcher’s blight’ or a ‘witcher’s passing’ – the end of the “Path”, so to speak – so there was no telling how long it would take the wolf to recover, particularly given how closely the man had come to death. The older witcher didn’t seem surprised that Geralt slept for hours at a time and woke for less. She tried to take comfort in that. Tried to take comfort in watching her witcher rest, but neither she nor Jaskier found much comfort in it at all – particularly when Geralt began to press for freedom from his sickbed.

She remembered still leaving him for but a moment and returning to the sight of the wolf just after having picked himself up from the floor – hip already blooming into something purple and puffy, cheeks red knowing he had been caught. Jaskier had rushed to him, hands on the witcher in an instant as he lifted Geralt’s shirt, babbling all the while like a panicked mother. Dramatic as always.

“M’fine,” Geralt had muttered, but she knew how much the fall had smarted his pride. He wouldn’t meet either of their eyes, and furthermore, he allowed Jaskier to fret over him instead of shying away or snarling something cruel to hide his own apprehension. His surprising patience was likely a mixture of leftover guilt for the things he had said to both of them, despite having been forgiven as he vomited his self-inflicted punishment – and perhaps, just perhaps, the smallest sliver of fear. The wolf had never been left weak for long before this. She wondered if he had ever fallen like that after standing from any of his prior stints in sickbeds. He was used to returning to his feet quickly.

Instead he shook like a fawn before them, all lanky and trembling limbs. Despite how he towered over the bard, exhaustion stooped him somewhat from his normal stance, and Yennefer could tell by the cant of the man’s hips that he was using the bard as a crutch in whatever way he could that displayed that fact as little as possible and yet still supported him. Perhaps Jaskier could not tell, consumed in his fretting as he was, but Yennefer’s eyes were keen to the lies of a man’s body. Most men were like books written by children, perhaps four pages long at best.

“Fine? You’re black and blue! Why didn’t you just stay put, we were coming right back!” Jaskier bickered, giving Yennefer a look as though he expected her to weigh in.

She was hardly about to fault the man – particularly one used to fending for himself – for hoping he could make use of the privy under his own volition. But that hardly meant she would allow the witcher to keep making foolish choices either. Just as she knew why he had done it, she also knew he had purposefully waited for them to leave lest one of them insist on supervising at best, assisting at worst. Prideful beast.

“I did not think we had all reached this point in our relationship yet, but I’m more than happy to introduce ropes and bindings to how we share our bed, Geralt. Jaskier and I have discussed it at length, even, while on the road. Evidently our learned bard knows a lovely way to frame a body such as yours with knots.”

Surprising them yet again, Geralt blushed something beautiful at that, pale as he was. It rose up his neck to the tips of his ears, made a rosy home in the flesh of chest that peaked out from beneath his night shirt. And his cheeks!

That had cowed the witcher suitably; for a day.

They took turns watching him after that. Slowly, he began to regain the energy to leave their bed, albeit for small stints. It began with relieving himself, then bathing. Short walks, making it to a table to eat – a feat he conquered eventually, albeit as pale as a sheet that hung in a field and shaking like the wind that dried it. He improved, always with one of them beside him like a shadow, chatting casually as they tried their best to look as though they were not always anticipating the possibility that he might fall again. He got better slowly. Still, unease curled in Yennefer’s gut.

Despite his longevity and his hair and his eyes and every inch of him that said _‘I am more than a man’;_ despite the names society called him and the stories they told about the ferocity of witchers… he was so painfully mortal.

Even now Yennefer could not help but feel ill at ease despite the peace of it all. She had Geralt curled against her hip, his face pressed into the warm curve of her thigh, fast asleep. Jaskier had left to stretch his legs, and with any luck he’d return with a treat for them all – a plate of cured meats or fruit or cheese, perhaps. This particular little “nap” had already lasted four hours. And to think, he once struggled to sleep in the slightest… A part of her enjoyed it, of course. It brought a strange flicker of warmth to her chest to see the normally stoic man like this: soft in his sleep in a way he refused or perhaps simply did not know how to be while awake. Unburdened by his many layers of mental shields and emotional barriers that training had engraved into him as deeply and stoically as the groves on a bloodletting table.

But another part of her worried. She wanted him to rest just as much as she wanted him to wake and prove he was healing, that he’d be fine. Patience, as it turned out, was perhaps not her strong suit either.

He was still so thin, and his thinness only served to draw his scars tauter about his body. Not that they were unsightly – rather quite the opposite – but it served to make her larger than life witcher look strangely small. He’d eat, he’d regain what he had lost, she knew this. The question was not ‘how long until he was back to full form’ but rather ‘could they keep the witcher still long enough to heal before his restlessness got the better of him’.

As if he could hear her thoughts Geralt huffed against her skin, lips parted sleepily and just barely grazing the curve of her thigh from his nearness. A quirk of his she now recognized as the witcher growing closer to waking. She knew what would follow: a grumbly, stir-crazy wolf without the energy to back up his restlessness. Her hand drifted down to his hair out of habit rather than any true intention, nails grazing his scalp kindly as she burrowed her fingers into those thick white locks made soft as silk thanks to Jaskier’s endless soaps and oils. Beneath her hand Geralt slowly but surely settled, his breath evening once more. Another moment of peace bought, however brief. She’d let him wake when Jaskier returned, armed with meats and no end of rambling thoughts with which to distract Geralt with. Until then, she let the hush of the witcher’s breath and the beat of his heart against her leg soothe her worries – perhaps she too just needed to learn how to enjoy rest.

— • —

Jaskier woke, curled into the sheets alone. It wasn’t altogether uncommon in one sense – Geralt and Yennefer were both terrible sleepers. Yen had likely gone to the library to read her restlessness away. Since coming to Kaer Morhen, however, Jaskier usually woke with at least one large arm around his waist and Geralt’s nose pressed to his hair. The man had yet to return to his lighter sleeping habits, still neck deep in recovery. And yet, Jaskier woke alone with only sheets to keep him warm.

He came to slowly, his body and mind fighting waking viciously. His eyes felt swollen and gritty and he knew immediately that it was not yet close to morning, his lethargy far too intense to be even remotely close to a full night of rest. He felt struck dumb, everything connecting slowly. He had woken – but why? A sound. Wheezing. Close and relentless, steadily getting louder, more frantic.

Slowly that began to rouse him. It set off a warning bell somewhere in the sleepy fog of his mind, shrilling and ringing as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The moon spilled in through the window, shadows from the tree outside dappling the man sitting on the edge of the bed in shifting greys and pale moonlit patches. He could see the way Geralt’s back was quaking in tight, twitchy bursts. He had seen the look before, the way the coughing could seize the man up into a terrible knot of tightness. But there was no coughing, no flowers. Just awful, wrenching wheezes.

“Gr’lt?” he mumbled first, rubbing the worst of the grit from his eyes as he tried to understand what was happening. When the witcher didn’t immediately reply Jaskier tried again, “Geralt?”

Wheezing, high and thin and reedy. Now that Jaskier was looking, he could see the painful stretch of Geralt’s ribs against the taut stretch of his skin, flexing and expanding in short, aborted bursts – as if he couldn’t breathe. That sobered him.

“Geralt!” He gasped, fighting with the sheets to disentangle himself and make his way across the bed to him. Geralt turned somewhat to look at him with wide eyes, feverish with a glaze of fear and embarrassment. He had one hand to his mouth, trying to smother the sound of his panic beneath his knuckles as he waved Jaskier off with his other.

He tried to wheeze ‘sorry’ and failed spectacularly.

Jaskier pressed a hand to the man’s broad shoulder and he could feel every ripple of struggle in those muscles, every cut off breath that couldn’t quite be drawn deep enough. Geralt felt cold to the touch.

“What is it? More flowers?” Jaskier stammered, words coming in a quick tumble as adrenaline burned the last of his sleepiness away. “Geralt, what’s wrong? Should I fetch Vesemir? Yen? By the gods, Geralt, say _something_ , I don’t know what to do!”

Geralt reached for him, nose flaring wildly as he struggled through the wheezing. A large pale hand curled in the front of Jaskier’s nightshirt and for a mindless moment the bard feared he might be struck – the movement far too similar to the men he’d cuckolded who’d caught him – until that fisted hand suddenly went flat against Jaskier’s chest. Bracing, as if trying to use him as an anchor.

“M’ – M’fine,” Geralt managed to mumble through whispered, harsh exhales and short, throbbing little inhales.

Jaskier grabbed his wrist, something hot and fierce rising in him at that as he snapped, “Don’t you dare lie to me. Not right now. Not after I nearly watched you die coughing _flowers_ because you were lying to yourself. Don’t you fucking dare, Geralt. Do I need to go get someone?”

The witcher watched him for a long moment, yellow eyes flickering eerily in the low light of the room until finally he shook his head no. No, as if everything were fine, as if he wasn’t panicking. But Jaskier had seen Geralt face down all manner of monsters and bandits and dangerous situations. He knew what Geralt looked like when he wasn’t afraid because he was certain everything would be fine, confident in his training. He knew what that looked like, and it certainly was this: Geralt, wide eyed and wheezing and shivering so hard that Jaskier could feel it through the hand firmly planted on his chest.

Jaskier pressed forward. He grabbed Geralt by the jaw and looked for any sign of petals on his lips, in his teeth or on the bed. Then, and only then, did he feel some modicum of comfort fall over him. There were no flowers, no petals, no blossoms. It was more the memory of choking that choking itself; as if, even after being cured, Geralt’s body could not quite forget.

“M’fine,” Geralt wheezed again, jaw tight under the cradle of Jaskier’s hands. Pained. Afraid.

“How can I help?” Jaskier asked.

Geralt shook his head weakly, fingers digging into Jaskier’s chest ever so slightly, and bowed his head. His breath whistled and clicked something awful, but beneath all that, Jaskier saw Geralt’s breathing steady ever so slightly. Just somewhat deeper than before.

Jaskier wasn’t a stupid man. A man doesn’t go to a university like Oxenfurt and walk away with nothing under his belt but debt. Cause and effect, dots connecting like stars shooting across the sky, illuminating constellations. Jaskier _was_ an anchor. An example to set his breathing to like a Skellege war drum urging rowers on to battle.

“Come,” he said firmly, taking Geralt’s hand from his chest and urging the witcher to follow him further back onto the bed. Confused, Geralt stiffly remained on the edge of the bed, eyes narrowed. Jaskier blew out an exasperated breath and reached forward again – twisting awkwardly – and tugged the witcher to him with a pleading, “I know I’m not mage or healer, but just trust me.”

Begrudgingly, wariness high in the exhausted fever glaze of his eyes, Geralt gave in to him. He followed the bard’s hands until he was sitting back against the head board, legs spread. Jaskier removed his shirt and wormed his way into the witcher’s lap in a flash, not hesitating for so much as a moment lest Geralt question him. He caught a glimpse of a struck-dumb expression on the wolf’s face before Jaskier was pressing his back into Geralt’s chest, his slighter frame engulfed against the witcher. He took either of Geralt’s hands and wrapped them around him, placing either palm flat against his belly and his chest, his own hands and fingers entangled in the witcher’s, keeping them firmly in place.

“Follow my lead,” Jaskier said, then took a slow breath – just a few seconds – held it for a short beat, then exhaled it. Each time he drew in a little more air, held it a little longer, exhaled a little more. Geralt didn’t catch on, not quite at first. Jaskier could feel the awful hitch of his breathing through the skin of his back and the slim curl of his ribs. But slowly, ever so slowly, Geralt began to follow the tempo of his breathing. In, hold, out, hold, in, hold, out, hold. Jaskier, despite himself, did not talk. He didn’t want to talk over the sound of their breathing. Didn’t want to miss one second of Geralt’s breathing as it steadily began to even out. He ached to babble comforts and frivolous encouragements, but witchers took actions to heart with much more gusto than words and he knew without looking that the sound of their breathing was helping Geralt far more than any conversation might. The hands he cradled began to warm in his. The wheezing eased, the clicking faded and the whistling disappeared. At some point Geralt had fully curled around him, his stubbled jaw a soothing burn against the smooth skin of Jaskier’s shoulder. Heavy and anchoring as Geralt’s limbs loosened around him.

The witcher hummed against him, soft and acknowledging. A thank you, Jaskier liked to think. Not that he could ask, what with the witcher quite nearly asleep. He eased them both down, careful to keep Geralt’s front to his back and his hands on his chest. And like that, finally, they fell back to sleep – legs entangled, the wolf’s nose in his hair, breathing easily.

In the morning, while Jaskier was still dizzy with waking – loathe to leave the warmth and comfort of sleep – Geralt pressed a kiss to his neck and murmured, “Thank you.”

Jaskier mumbled sleepy nonsense at him and Geralt kissed him again, confident in those early moments where Yen and Jaskier’s cleverness was made soft by morning and he could make small gestures with abandon, the two of them too sleepy to comment on it or see.

— • —

Jaskier told Yennefer the next day about the little episode. Privately, of course. He wouldn’t wish that scare upon anyone. Not the terror of seeing Geralt that way, nor the heartbreak of seeing that frustration in his eyes. The question rang in all their heads: _why wasn’t he better yet?_

— • —

Eventually, Geralt demanded to see Roach. It did not matter that she was safely tucked away in Kaer Morhen’s stable or that she had a whole pasture to graze from and enjoy. It didn’t matter that Vesemir was looking after her. Geralt needed to see her and that was that. He refused for them to bring her directly outside the entrance to Kaer Morhen. He’d make it to the stable or not at all, he had told them, and they could see by the set of his jaw alone that the matter was not up for negotiation. Not when it came to Roach.

He made it – nearly as pale as his own hair and stinking of sweat, but victorious nonetheless. Yennefer saw the softness on Jaskier’s face as the bard watched the witcher with his horse. Not that she could blame him, it was hard not to love Geralt in these moments – glimpses into a world where the man lived and loved openly because Roach would never tell him not to. Not like his training, not like the people who rebuked him and feared him.

He had a special sort of calmness to his face whenever Roach pressed her head into his chest, demanding attention. Without a doubt, the horse had worried. It fretted and nibbled and lipped at Geralt’s hair and the shoulder of his shirt, snuffling and touching as though convincing herself that her human was upright and alive. And Geralt, despite his weariness and the way the wind destroyed the mask his clothing had built to hide his thinness, looks years younger in her presence.

“I know emotions aren’t a witcher’s thing,” Jaskier whined playfully from the entrance of the stables, one hip pressed to its frame, “But I can’t believe I’m jealous of the way Geralt looks at a horse.”

Roach paid him no mind, far more enraptured with eating apple slices from Geralt’s somewhat trembling hand. He was strong enough to love her, and that was all that mattered to Roach. Geralt, though, couldn’t help but snort through a small, wry smile – an expression just as much a part of his vocabulary as words to a linguist.

“Speak for yourself,” Yennefer purred, taking up the other side of the door frame, “I’ve seen that look before.”

“No, no,” Jaskier continued, “You’ve seen _a_ look. But I am quite fluent in witcher, and not every look is the same. He’s shared many a loving look with us both, but there is a special one for Roach, his first love.”

“First love,” Geralt grunted, the sound flirting with the tenor of a chuckle. When he moved for the brush, Yennefer sighed.

“Geralt, you cannot be serious,” Jaskier said, brows dipped in concern as he expressed, as he did in all ways, his theatric concern.

“I don’t often agree with the bard on principal – far more fun that way – but I can’t deny him now. Grooming is a long endeavor, Geralt,” she said, and it was as close as she could come to saying ‘I don’t think you’ll last that long’ as she could manage without fearing his pride anchor him mulishly.

Geralt merely grunted again and said, “The promise a man makes when he takes in a horse is a simple one: you carry me and I’ll carry you. If I don’t have the strength to see her well-kept, then my right to her companionship and service is forfeit.”

“Speaks more about the horse, too,” Jaskier scoffed, crossing his arms as his face twisted somewhat, as though he were taking into consideration something distasteful. Yennefer knew the look, her face likely matched. Neither she nor the bard had ever had a liking for taking care of working animals, and yet here they were, all for their fawn-legged witcher.

She sighed, the roll of her eyes heavy and pointed as she hung her lavish cloak onto a peg as far from the animals and the stink that followed them as she could. Then she took up another brush and said, “Jaskier, tie back my hair, if you’d please. If I’m to do this fool thing for our witcher, I refuse to let Roach’s _lovely perfume_ follow me home too.”

The bard didn’t utter so much as one complaint, taking to her hair as though it had been something he had wanted to get his hands into for some time. She took note of that, but not before she turned her gaze to Geralt. Geralt who was staring at her somewhat owlishly, as though she had grown a second head.

“Don’t give me that look, I’m hardly heartless,” Yennefer snapped, sniffing disdainfully even as something playful flickered in her eyes. “But this doesn’t come without a price, Geralt. You’ll agree to a stool if we are to do this. And _dry_ maintenance only.”

They spoiled her that day, the three of them. Roach whickered and nibbled at them cheerfully as three sets of hands went about taking care of her hair, her fur, her shoes and anything else Geralt deemed worthy of their attention. Surprisingly Geralt stuck to the terms of their agreement. He used the stool Jaskier found him, albeit grumbling somewhat at first. And by the end of it, despite his love for Roach, he seemed just as eager as the rest of them to return to the warmth of Kaer Morhen.

He didn’t even argue when they pressed close to him, worried by the way he stumbled. There was a glaze to his eyes that bespoke how much energy tending to Roach had costed him. A sluggishness in his grumbling and a lack of protest as they handled him that was both relieving – tired as Jaskier and Yennefer were – and concerning.

Yennefer had long ago enchanted Kaer Morhen’s tub into something larger, something far more similar to the one she and Geralt had first shared. It was a squeeze, but they all managed to slip into it together; a memory that, if pressed, Geralt actually thought was a dream and still didn’t quite believe it happened. But it had. Together, Jaskier and Yennefer had tended to him first – Jaskier behind him, kneading the worst of the tension from his shoulders as Yennefer went about erasing Roach’s smell from him. By the time they were done with him, the witcher was leaning back against the edge of the tub nearly asleep, watching them with lazy eyes as Yennefer and Jaskier then tended to one another with an easy familiarity that once again reminded him of the time the two had spent without him.

“M’we shoul’do this ‘gain,” Geralt had murmured, eyes fever bright beneath the glaze of exhaustion that dogged him.

“You like what you see?” Yennefer purred, reaching an arm back to cup Jaskier’s neck behind her, her breast exposed beautifully by the motion, twisting her face easily into the crook of his neck to peck a light kiss into the curve of the bard’s jaw, lilac eyes on Geralt all the while. That woke him up. “Perhaps if you are a very, very good witcher and don’t argue when we feed you – no, don’t give me that look, I’ve _noticed_ your lack of appetite – and tuck you to bed early, we’ll keep that in mind. For when you’re better.”

He grunted, that crisp, growly sort of sound she was ever so familiar with; and behind her she felt Jaskier stiffen, his hands tightening around the soft give of her waist, dimpling her hips with the long fingers common to artists. Amber eyes watched them keenly, lazily, as they bathed one another. Watched where Jaskier’s hands cupped a firm breast. Watched as they switched, as Yennefer’s slimmer ones ran slowly down from Jaskier’s chest, over the slope of his flat belly, down to the thatch of hair at his crotch and semi-hard dick between his legs.

“But we could give you a show in the meantime,” Yennefer mused, now behind Jaskier, her chin on his shoulder as she exposed the bard to Geralt. She took her time stroking the slim man. Clever fingers tracing the slit of his head, making him grow fully hard as he whimpered and croaked, “Don’t _tease_ , Yennefer, it’s cruel.”

“Should I stop?” She asked Geralt, one brow raised, her hand still on Jaskier’s prick. Jaskier looked at him like a drowning man.

Geralt ached to join them, but even now he knew willpower alone was keeping him awake – willpower and curiosity. To stand and join them felt like a feat more akin to climbing a mountain. But watching? His dick twitched in his lap and he rumbled, “No.”

He wanted to see this.

Jaskier mewled, something torn between surprise and eagerness and overwhelmed as Yennefer brought one hand up to tweak a soft, pink nipple – eyes on Geralt all the while.

“You need not be an inactive participant,” she said to Geralt, drinking in the hunger building in the witcher’s bones, “Direct me. I shall be your conduit.”

Jaskier moaned.

Geralt watched them a second more before he grunted and said, “He’s sensitive,” and let his lips curl ever so slightly into a smirk when Jaskier’s startled eyes darted to him. “Think you can make him come with just his nipples?”

“Mercy above,” Jaskier gasped as Yennefer crooned, plush lips against his shoulder. He could _feel_ her grinning against his skin as she purred, “I’m sure I could figure it out.”

He whined when her hand left his prick and Geralt took his own in hand, eyes on them both. He felt hollow from their excursion to visit Roach, but if his cock could harden, he could find the energy to attend to it. The witcher thumbed the head as Yennefer brought both of her hands up to Jaskier’s chest, letting the man lean into her weakly as his knees threatened to buckle – but held.

“What lovely songs you sing,” Yennefer hummed between kisses to the man’s nape and shoulder and jaw. “I don’t know what I enjoy more, your lyrics or the sounds you make when you’re incapable of words in the slightest. What do you think, Geralt?”

Geralt growled, his cock twitched.

Yennefer grinned with a slow, “I agree,” and bit Jaskier’s shoulder. The man made a keening sound that made Geralt dribble a spurt of precome excitedly, unexpectedly. But he kept the tempo of his hand slow and steady, intent to follow Yennefer’s pace as she unwound their bard. Jaskier’s hands went absent mindedly toward his prick, but Yennefer gave him a more pointed nip and said, “None of that now, you heard the witcher. No touching,” and Jaskier moaned a wrecked, “I can’t.”

She flicked one nipple and pinched the other, and Geralt bite his cheek at the sight of how that made Jaskier’s cock jerk openly, neglected and aching.

“Perhaps I should suck them,” she mused, pinching and tugging and rubbing those small nubs mercilessly into hard little peaks. Jaskier brought a hand back to clutch the nape of her neck, to steady himself, and something hungry flashed in Yennefer’s eyes – pleased.

“Please, Y-Yen,” then, when she didn’t answer pointedly, he looked to Geralt and whined out his name.

“Tell him what you would do to him, Geralt,” Yennefer said, eyes on him over Jaskier’s shoulder.

Jaskier – horny by words as he was prone to be – was helpless as Geralt finally spoke.

“I’d fuck him,” he started, eyes sharp and bright and locked on them both. “Open him up with my fingers. Maybe my tongue.”

Jaskier jerked in Yennefer’s hold, an aborted sound caught in his throat as he craned his head back to rest on the woman’s shoulder.

“Gods, have mercy,” he wheezed as Geralt continued.

“I’d go in slowly. So slowly he’d be writhing. Maybe have’em on his hands and knees so he could service you while I service him. Put his clever tongue and fingers to use making you wet while I focused on making him sloppy from pleasure. Not let’em off until he got you off. Bring you off together. Fuck you by fucking him, like a chain.”

“F-fuck! Fuck!” Jaskier stuttered, hips jerking uselessly, seeking friction – anything – as Yennefer tweaked and rubbed. He wanted her mouth on him; on his cock or his nipples. Anything. “I – oh – fuck.”

“I’ve never heard him so ineloquent,” Yennefer purred.

“Yeah, well—” Jaskier’s words fled him in a shout as Yennefer did something tricky with her fingers. Something magical and electric, and a burble of precome dribbled helplessly from Jaskier’s cock.

“I can’t,” Jaskier babbled, “I can’t, I can’t!”

“You can,” Geralt said, voice so low it sounded more like rocks sliding down a mountain than a man, “You will. Do what you showed me in that tavern in Velen, Yen.”

Her eyes twinkled, and she said, “Gladly,” before drawing Jaskier’s face to the side for an awkward kiss, distracting him as one hand left his nipple to reach down into the bath water and slip a finger inside the bard. Geralt watched Jaskier’s eyes widen, then his mouth fall slack against Yennefer’s own domineering lips as she found that place inside him and pressed.

“Oh,” Jaskier whined, breathy and lost as he came, his whole body drawing taut like a sail in the wind. He came without a hand on his prick, one hand buried in Yennefer’s thick hair, the other braced against the edge of the tub and shaking, knuckles white. Geralt came to the sight of it, jaw tight as he grunted and released.

Jaskier melted into her a second later, chest heaving as he said, “You cruel, tricky devils,” with no real heat. “Utter monsters, you are, the both of you.”

Yennefer just looked pleased as punch as she guided the bard’s face up to look at her – soft and fuzzy from orgasm – and asked, “Think you can do one more thing with that beautiful mouth of yours?”

She traced his pink, puffy lips with a thumb. Jaskier sucked in a tired and yet intrigued breath, and Geralt saw it the moment the bard decided to rally.

The two of them agreed to wait for the bed though. First they had Geralt sit on a stool outside the tub. Jaskier dried the wolf’s hair as Yennefer attended to her own. Then they moved to the bed, Geralt beside them as Yennefer lowered herself onto Jaskier’s face. The witcher pet her sides, traced her breasts, brushed back her hair as Jaskier did his utmost to return the favor and render the mage just as senseless as she had him. Yennefer was unabashed with the sounds he drew from her. Long, lingering purrs and moans meant to direct him. And Jaskier – musician that he was – followed her music beautifully. Leading her to stunning crescendos and heady choruses until finally she came, his chin wet and his smile glossy. He cleaned himself up on shaking legs and returned to curl with them both.

Geralt made a contented, grumbly sort of sound, at peace – pleased to find the two people who had been taking care of him sated and satisfied. And then they curled together on the bed, the craft of fitting three bodies on the groaning thing long having become a science with Jaskier tucked into one of Geralt’s arms and Yennefer tucked into the other. The two of them traced idle patterns into his skin and made light conversation until slowly, inevitably, they lulled the wolf to sleep.

— • —

Kaer Morhen was no lord or lady’s courtly estate, that much was certain, but the longer Jaskier lingered in its marble halls, the more he found himself charmed by the place. It was a strange mixture of old and decrepit, and yet homely and comforting. Despite its delipidated look, it was obvious that the witchers of the School of the Wolf had made a home of this place; or at the very least, Vesemir had. In its nooks and crannies Jaskier found odd luxuries such as the open window seat that overlooked the gardens; although ‘garden’ was likely a generous word. It was not so much a garden as it was that the training fields had become somewhat overrun by flora. All the same, it looked beautiful and served to bless him with quite an astounding view whenever he took to playing his lute there as a ruse to watch over his rather stubborn witcher.

He and Yennefer had managed to persuade Geralt to bedrest for a week by various means, but the inevitable had come for them all – riding on Vesemir’s heels, of all things. The older witcher had made the case that Geralt should train now that his feet were beneath him again, that weeks of choking on flowers and focusing on getting to Ciri to Kaer Morhen above all things had taken its toll. And Geralt had latched onto that olive branch immediately.

It did not, however, go quite as Geralt had undoubtedly expected and precisely as Vesemir had thought. The white wolf had slowed. He was spryer than a man, yes, but slower than a witcher ought to be. Vesemir led him through grueling sessions, short at first and increasing each day – each one leaving the wolf dusty and more exhausted than the day before.

“Is this truly wise?” He had asked Yennefer from his perch one afternoon, eyes caught on Geralt as he let loose a font of Axii that knocked him back – his stance correct but his legs too exhausted to bear it. “How can he recover if Vesemir beats the shit out of him each day?”

Yennefer held her silence for a moment, lilac eyes drawn to their struggling wolf as well, before finally she said, “We could not keep him in our bed forever. He’s a witcher, not a pet.”

“Never said what he was or wasn’t,” Jaskier pouted, too worried to react as he usually might to the barb, “I just… I’ve never seen him struggle like this. How long before he goes hunting for contracts again?”

Yennefer drew closer then, her hip against the bard’s ribs as she lured his face away from the training fields to instead look upon her. She brushed the boyish cut of his hair from his brow with a seriousness that nearly made Jaskier comment on it, and yet he couldn’t find the words in the face of her intensity. Her hands were soft, softer than his own despite all the oils he used. Soft in a way human hands just couldn’t be, the double-edged reminder of her power and the price she paid to have it.

“I’ve come to find that the moments in which I was told I _couldn’t_ do a thing only drove me to ruin as I tried to prove that _I could_ ,” she mumbled, eyes distant even as she stood so close. A memory played behind those lilac eyes and for a moment, Jaskier thought that maybe he could see it. Fire. Pain. “Perhaps the best thing we can do for him now is have faith, despite what our eyes tell us, lest we run him into the ground with our worrying.”

Through the open window and out on the field, Geralt gave a bitten off shout as the sound of a wooden sword striking his knee pierced the quiet, gliding in on the breeze that swayed the curtains. Jaskier’s gaze drifted in Geralt’s direction but Yennefer would not let go of his face. That alone made him return to her, face twisted in a grimace, nothing elegant or theatrical about it.

“How can you stand it?” He asked.

“Because that is what he needs: for us to stand it.”

— • —

Even as physically he improved each day, the sessions drew his emotional well-being tighter and tighter until Geralt was nothing more than a thread pulled too tight – practically singing with tension – ready to snap. Jaskier and Yennefer could see it in him. Could see that storm brewing in the painful constriction of his shoulders and the way he stopped himself during his training to close his eyes and breathe through flared, frustrated nostrils, jaw tight and teeth grinding. Witchers were quick healers, and yet the ways of witcher appeared to return to Geralt slowly; as if his body were loath to leave the peace of those healing days.

Learning as they were, it was hard to gauge whether he needed space or comfort – harder still because even when he _needed_ comfort, he often _ran_ from it. Reminding them all just how he had ended up in that state in the first place.

But no one turned out to be a better buffer in those early training days than Ciri. She sat in the yard often to watch him. At first Jaskier and Yennefer had worried if Geralt’s pride might be exasperated by the extra witness, but Vesemir had said letting her stay was a good idea -- and he wasn’t wrong.

Ciri crowed for Geralt often. Everything the man did was awe-inspiring to a mind so young, so new to fighting and so enamored by the man who had almost died protecting her, but _didn’t_. The first man who had survived the mark of fate and destiny that had ruined her life for unknown reasons. She’d sit on broken pillars or warped scaffolding. Sometimes she’d even attempt to mimick Geralt’s forms – crudely, but adorably, and Yennefer and Jaskier often enjoyed watching from afar as Geralt’s little shadow performed behind him.

Her opinion was only that of a little girl, Geralt knew it just as much as anyone. He was still recovering slowly, and that knowledge lingered on the heels of his patience, snapping at his ankles. But the company of a girl so innocent and optimistic despite everything that had happened to her seemed to soften Geralt like a bloom thawing in the spring. Ciri was sunlight and cheer and warmth wrapped in a small body, with small hands and too large eyes – and damn if her excitement wasn’t contagious.

“You were right,” Yennefer mused one afternoon, watching from the library window as Vesemir began to stack books for Ciri’s eventual education. The old man looked excited almost at the prospect of teaching again. It seemed no one was immune to Ciri’s charms. “She’s good for him.”

“Geralt may not remember this way, but this is a technique we’ve often used with mending witchers. Not everyone is as well off with their mutations as Geralt, afterall. He was always an almost unnaturally adept healer. For the others, when impatience and frustration began to rankle them, we’d put the new lads into the ring to watch. Their excitement and awe always did wonders for a man’s brittle ego. Geralt’s no different.”

“You mean to tell me Geralt was once one of those little boys cheering like Ciri?” Yennefer asked, amusement obvious on her face and in her tone as she turned from the window to look at the elder witcher.

Vesemir was smiling ever so slightly, fond and introspective – eyes blind to the room itself as he remembered days long since past.

“Yes,” Vesemir mused. “It took him time to open up. Geralt took his role as his father’s child surprise as sourly as any child would – but he eventually opened up to be a wild young boy, eager to learn. Had somewhat of a hero complex, actually.”

“Still does,” Yennefer laughed.

“No,” Vesemir chuckled, hanging onto the vowel, “Not in the manner that he does now. He has finicky morals in comparison to a lot of the witchers that have passed through these halls. No, when he was young, he had more a mind of being a hero than a monster hunter. He confused the two in his training. Learned the truth of things right quick though.”

Yennefer frowned slightly.

“What do you mean?”

Vesemir looked up from his stacked books, surprised, and said, “You’ve seen the signs, how townsfolk treat us. Mutants. Geralt could save a babe from a fire, and maybe that mother might appreciate it, but not a single man or woman – mother included – would invite him into their home to rest or sup or drink. He is a monster hunter. A damned good one. But witchers can’t be heroes. Not the way that little boys hope, at least.”

“You haven’t heard Jaskier’s songs then,” Yennefer said, turning back to the window. She watched as Ciri hooted, excited as Geralt’s tempo steadily began to pick up on a training dummy. He was improving, thank the gods. “Many have changed their minds.”

“Love, like hate, is quite contagious.”

That startled her. She turned to look at him, to delve deeper into that insight, but Vesemir was already heading out of the room – leaving her to stew in that way, she quickly found, he loved to do.

— • —

Geralt had never been a fussy eater. Yennefer, Jaskier, Ciri – all three of them had seen him eat all manner of (sometimes revolting) things on the road, albiet Ciri less so. Of them, she was the most accustomed to his recent lack of appetite. How he’d gag when trying to eat, only manage a few morsels or bites, then ultimately give up. Flowers, cloying and smothering as they had been, had made eating all but miserable. The petals and stems had scratched up his throat, made it a swollen and tight terrible mess. Swallowing anything heavier than water had been an exhausting task, and the aversion that followed had ultimately taken its toll on Geralt’s body.

They wanted him to eat. _He_ wanted to eat. A witcher that could be blown over by a stiff breeze was no witcher at all. But even the mere sight of food sent his stomach flipping – torn between cramps of hunger and nauseating memories of the pain of swallowing.

Thus he found himself at a table, a bowl of stew before him and Yennefer looming across the table, both hands braces as she scowled. He drank the broth, picked at the vegetables made soft by the stew, but the meat – hearty and thick – laid untouched at the bottom amidst dregs of broth. His stomach curled painfully. He could practically taste the meat in his mouth. He wanted the protein, knew he needed it. Knew that Vesemir was excellent with beef, that each cut would be thick and juicy and satisfying.

But the thought of swallowing something so thick, even after chewing, made his gut clench dreadfully. It was stupid. The affliction was gone, his throat long since soothed since the flowers’ passing. Yet the memory persisted, cloying and demanding attention.

“Surely this isn’t too heavy for your stomach,” Yennefer said, hand waving at the bowl, agitated, “You can’t live off broth and vegetables, Geralt.”

“I know,” he growled, earning a sharp look from the woman. He hadn’t told them of his aversion. He didn’t even know how to describe it. It was nothing; a nonsense paranoia that was slowly starving him. It was easiest to say his stomach needed time to adjust to food again. They had done their best to cope with that – starting with bread and soups. Bread, well… they had long given up on that but soups, at least, he could make it look as though they were making progress.

It was Ciri that noticed first.

Children, so absorbed with learning everything that they could like sponges, saw it the moment Yennefer left – frustrated and needing space. Had seen how Geralt had grimaced and rubbed at his throat, just as he used to by the fire and in the many inns they eventually began to stay at. How he’d set his plate aside and rub at his throat. Pour himself something hot and soothing, sometimes even just hot water if they had nothing else. As if he could burn the pain away.

She went to Vesemir. He reminded her of Mousesack and Eist. Steady, clever as a whip – albeit much more subdued than either. Like the stone that won’t bow to the river’s wrath, worn smooth by experience and time, but still unmovable. Despite his quietness and despite how hard he drilled Geralt, there was a tempered kindness there – back, far behind his eyes. Something patient and weathered, the soft of love that grows in even the coldest of people after years and years of attending to children, watching them grow. Getting invested.

“Do we have apples?” She asked. ‘We’, as though this were already home. Something flickered in Vesemir’s wizened face – surprised and a little soft.

“Apples?”

“Yes,” she said, “I want to help Geralt.”

“Did he ask for apples?” Vesemir asked, one brow quirking. Ciri shook her head, but offered no other explanations – and much as she expected, that kindness bade the old man listen, even despite the way he grumbled. Just like Geralt.

He brought her one apple. She said she needed more. So he brought more.

She took them to the kitchen and Vesemir followed – more curious than anything else. She watched as she looked in drawers and cabinets before she finally pouted, turned to him curtly and asked, “Do you have anything to smash them?”

“Oh,” Vesemir said, smiling not so much with his lips so much as his eyes as the dots slowly connected, “Kaer Morhen’s kitchen may be no castle’s kitchen, but I think we can figure something out.”

— • —

Ciri found Geralt on the training field, battering a practice dummy with his silver sword. Vesemir had warned her to wait if she found him like that, so she did – more than willing to watch the witcher work. She had heard the adults whispering about her. That soon, once they no longer had to worry over Geralt, she would need to be trained to protect herself. How to focus and hone her magical talents as well. She was eager to get started, and that excitement and impatience grew every time she saw Geralt train in the fields or witnessed Yennefer perform an act of magic as if it were no harder than breathing.

She sat atop a large stone, one of Kaer Morhen’s many fallen pillars or walls, and set two bowls beside her, careful to cover both with a napkin.

If Geralt noticed her, he didn’t make it obvious. He continued, legs working into fast, firm formations to support the twist of his waist, the reach of his arm, the swing of his sword. Despite the fluidity of his form, however, he was breathing hard, nearly thready. She saw him sway and have to readjust his footing more than once – the movement so quick she almost missed it.

But she knew what it was like to go hungry. A princess was expected to fit into no end of fine, slim gowns, after all. Yes. Even young as she was, even as Eist coaxed her and Calanthe scolded her, she knew hunger. _‘You look as though a stiff breeze might take you, love,’_ her grandmother used to say, her crisp critiques made softer by the worry in her eye. ‘ _Like a bird, you are. My little bird.’_

Yes. She knew hunger. And she knew how it made one swoon.

She saw when it finally hit Geralt – both the swoon and the dummy. A strike made too wide, one he rebounded from too slowly and which gave one of the dummy’s many arms too much momentum, costing him a smarting blow. The wooden arm slammed into his shoulder and made him stumble with a short, cut off grunt of pain. He stepped away, watched until the arm slowly drew still, then let his eyes crawl over to where Ciri perched. He sighed, set the sword aside to be cleaned and sharpened, and made his way over to her wordlessly.

He sat on the ground, his back pressed to the stone she sat on, and leaned his head back. His eyes drifted closed.

“I’m not ready to teach you,” he finally said, as though expecting that to be why she had come.

“I know,” she said, making him open one wry, narrow eye at her like a sleepy, wary – albeit amused – wolf. She smiled playfully, then grabbed the bowl beside her and said, “I made you something.”

Geralt grunted quizzically.

She passed him the bowl and watching him pale ever so slightly.

“You don’t even know what it is yet,” she said, partially pouting, partially excited for the eventual reveal. Because while she had often been left helpless in the face of Geralt’s pain, hunger she was intimately familiar with. This, she could help.

He lifted the napkin with another grunt, then raised his brows. She could smell the crisp, sweet aroma of apples that wafted up. The kiss of cinnamon, the notes of something sturdier and bland hiding beneath it. Chill in his palms, just as hers was as she grabbed her own bowl.

“What is this?” He asked.

“Apple sauce,” she said cheerfully, not looking at him as she made her grand reveal that she knew what the clever adults didn’t. “Eist used to make it for me when my throat was _sore_.”

And that… that hurt to say. More than she expected, even as she had tried to prepare herself. But it felt good to share this piece of him with someone. As if this small meal meant he carried on. It was a recipe from Eist’s mother, and her mother before her, and her mother before her. A remedy for every little boy or girl who felt fussy at the table, whether it be due to a scratchy throat or an upset stomach or even just the whims and moods of childhood. Eist had recognized in her what others hadn’t. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to eat, it was just the thought that eating something so heavy – thick slabs of pork or heavy cuts of steak, buttered and roasted and complimented with side dish upon side dish – brought forth a dread so fierce she could not swallow. Not when her figure was so closely tied to her worth, her destiny. Not by her grandmother’s standards, of course, but by the courts. She had heard their whispering. She still remembered a group of gossipers commenting that another princess not far from her age was sure not to get any reputable suiters with a waist of that size.

Not that any of that mattered anymore. That realization nearly made her laugh – something weak and trapped like a bird in her ribcage. To think she had starved herself for nothing.

She remembered Eist drawing her aside. Remembered how he took her into an empty kitchen because the recipe was top secret, not just _any_ chef could know. Her throat felt tight as she recalled his hands steadying hers through the movements of smashing the apples. How one had flung across the room on accident, how they had laughed until they were a giggling pile on the floor.

Her eyes felt hot, but not like before. Not like how they would get in the forest, when she would try to smother her cries in her fist lest Geralt notice. It was more like a gentle reminder of the pain than anything else. As if Eist had passed by and squeezed her shoulder fondly. Warm, like hello. Bittersweet, like goodbye.

Geralt didn’t comment on her phrasing, nor on her sudden silence. He never did. He always seemed to understand, and she him, as though they had a language all their own. She wondered if it was because she had been promised to him. She liked to think it was just because they had found the words together their own way.

He tried it. She knew what he would taste. Sweet red apples, making the sauce both sweet, tangy and textured. Cinnamon, to make it warm and spicy. Small oats, to make it filling, and finally powdered protein, to make him strong and fend off the ache of his hollow belly. Easy to swallow. Cool on his throat. Soothing and sweet.

He hummed as he did whenever he knew not what to say. In its inflection she knew he was pleasantly surprised. Touched, even, though he would never say it. Geralt bumped his shoulder against her leg where it dangled over the stone and she said simply, “You’re welcome,” knowing what he meant.

From the balcony, Vesemir smiled knowingly and watched one child surprise share a meal with another; as was the way of witchers.

— • —

The biggest celebration they have is the night that Geralt is deemed well enough to climb the vast set of stairs of Kaer Morhen’s tower. For at the top is not only what Vesemir had dubbed as ‘Geralt’s Room’, it is also where the largest bed in Kaer Morhen resides; and while they had enjoyed learning each other in the tiny sickbed, every one of them was eager for the space of a bed made for more than one and a half witchers.

It is a large thing – evidently a gift from a merchant Geralt had once saved. With no home of his own, he had sent it to Kaer Morhen. Since it was his boon, it had gone unused until now. They washed the sheets, aired out the quilts and furs. And that night, they slept in a bed big enough for all of them –

And woke one atop the other, like always. Like a pile of puppies, drawn to each other like moths to the flame as they slept.

“I suppose your witchering was good for _something_ ,” Yennefer moans as she stretches into such ample space before curling back into Geralt’s front, his back confidently and skillfully spooned by Jaskier who has turned out to be more octopus than man now that they all had space to utilize.

“Glad I could be of service,” Geralt said dryling, the littlest curl to his lip at hearing a boon of his journeys had brought one of his lovers’ pleasure. It was nice to provide for them, for once, since their reunion.

— • —

Geralt began to sleep lightly once more as the worst of the Witcher’s Blight finally ebbed from his bones, leaving him feeling more and more like the man he once was. That was how he found himself in the library one night, wandering the halls with an apple and knife in hand, cutting off small and idle slices to nibble on as he paced. Ciri’s apple sauce had done wonders in easing him back into eating, and the comfort that taste had brought him while at his hungriest had transferred into a love of the fruit in general now that he was back to eating solid food. He had just bit into a crisp slice when his roaming eyes had fallen upon Yennefer in one of Vesemir’s high backed chairs. She had a pile of books that reached up nearly as high as the arm rest, her attention lost in the pages in her hands.

Geralt smiled, something making his heart flutter for just the briefest moment. He liked this, he realized. He liked seeing Jaskier safe in his large bed and Yennefer curled pleasantly in Kaer Morhen’s high backed chairs. He liked seeing them _here_ , in what he had suddenly realized was in fact his home.

“Enjoying yourself?” He asked, “Or just can’t sleep?”

“When is it ever truly just one or the other?” She mused and he could hear in her words the breathy glaze of exhaustion that dogged her. She was close to being able to return to bed, then. Good. He wanted her to rest. Wanted to see her curled into Jaskier, their limbs entangled, the both of them safe in bed.

“Hmm,” he said, because he couldn’t exactly argue that. Not that he particularly missed the ability to fall asleep easily at the moment, not after so long bed bound. He would, eventually. But not now. He was more than happy to wander the halls in his sleeplessness for now if it meant he was improving, returning to his former self.

“I should have thought to visit ages ago,” Yennefer mused, eyes still caught in her book, “You witchers have an astounding collection of knowledge in these ugly old stones.”

“Kind of you to say,” Geralt chuckled wryly, amused by Yennefer’s amazement of their library as much as he was by her inclination to avoid admitting that she liked it here. It was no castle, no lord or lady’s house she might be used to – but it was charming in its own right, with more a sense of home than those of royalty or glamor.

She looked up at him then, her eyes roving up, then down over the sight of him.

“You look good,” she purred, letting her book fall closed in her lap as she better focused her attention on him, “Very good.”

“Feel good,” Geralt agreed, cutting another slice from his fruit. She leaned up at that and plucked it from his fingers, eyes blazing merrily as she placed it to her lush lips and took a bite, gaze on him all the while.

“Eating again too, I see. Good. The white wolf returns.”

He hummed again, moving to sit at her feet in lieu of dragging another chair across the stones. A part of him, though he would not admit it, sat there if only because it increased his chances of having her fingers in his hair again. He put his back against the chair, his shoulder pressed against the long line of one of her legs, and spread his own out before him lazily. He cut another slice, offered it up to her, before cutting one for himself as well.

“I’m happy to see you up,” she said idly as she nibbled at her apple, “But also displeased. Can’t sleep?”

“Was bound to happen eventually.”

It was her turn to hum this time, and Geralt tried not to think too hard about the little electric bolt of pleasure that flared in his chest when – just as he had hoped – Yennefer’s fingers drifted to his hair. He leaned his head back against the chair and her leg as she dragged her nails lightly over his scalp, sending pleasant shivers down his spine.

“You really are more wolf than man,” she said lightly.

“Hmm.”

“Though Vesemir tells me that before you were either, you wished to be a hero?”

His eyes slowly fell open at that, his body still. Her fingers continued to brush through his hair, soothing and steadfast. Geralt swallowed. He didn’t precisely want to talk about it. It felt foolish. A childish desire that had been stomped out of him quickly. But bottling things up had nearly killed him, and after everything she had done to save him, trusting him despite the Djinn, he could offer this at least.

“Yes,” he croaked. Winced. He cleared his throat and tried again when it became obvious that Yennefer was waiting for more, her fingers still against his scalp. “Yes… a foolish story, hardly exciting. As boys, we don’t run into many folk outside of Kaer Morhen. Those we do tend to have a generally decent opinion of witchers. I was… unprepared for how afraid the world would be of me.”

Yennefer leaned her own head back at that, her eyes falling shut.

“I can sympathize,” she said softly, resuming her stroking. After all, how many nights had she spent asleep with the flour sacks, dreaming of a prince charming coming to rescue her from her abuse? How many nights had she prayed her father would come for her even after he sold her to misery? Or that she’d actually found love in the circle, even as she knew better? Childish hopes, all crushed – then crushed some more.

“I know,” Geralt offered softly, one hand falling to curl around one of Yennefer’s ankles.

“We make quite a pair, you and I? We both grew up wanting the best, to _be_ the best. Look where we are now,” she mused slowly.

“I quite like where you are now,” came a voice from the doorway. Both of them turned to see Jaskier there, done up in their quilts in such a way that he looked more like a kicked puppy or a sleepy boy than the man who could swoop into a pub and charm everyone into dancing with nothing but a lute and his voice.

Yennefer watched him with smoldering, considering eyes for a long moment before she patted the arm rest on the free side of her legs, opposite of where Geralt sat, and said, “I did not expect to see _you_ , puppy.”

“Rude,” he said, but came to her nonetheless.

“Which part?” Geralt asked, a wry curl of amusement every so slightly tinging his mouth.

Jaskier just glared balefully, the effect ruined as his sleepiness turned the expression into more of a pout than anything serious. He settled in next to Geralt, the two of them crowding either side of Yennefer’s legs. She slide the fingers of her free hand into Jaskier’s hair and felt that man, too, slowly calm beneath her touch.

Jaskier mumbled something.

“What was that, dear?” Yennefer purred, almost certain she had caught it but unable to resist having him repeat it.

Jaskier drew in a deep, annoyed breath – utterly put upon – and repeated brattily, “ _Ican’tsleepwellaloneanymorethankstoyoutwo.”_

Geralt watched him, something unfathomable in his face – blank but steadily showing more and more each day. Jaskier almost called it fondness. Above him Yennefer hummed happily and said, “How sweet. Now was that so hard?”

Jaskier curled his legs up to his chest and hid his blush in his knees, but did not pull away from Yennefer’s clever fingers.

“Used to sleep just fine, thank you,” Jaskier whined. “You’ve both ruined me. Your sleeplessness is contagious and unwanted.”

Geralt let out a soft, hushed bark of a laugh before leaning back into Yennefer’s touch, his eyes sliding closed, and grunted warmly, “Welcome to the club.”

— • —

The time was vastly approaching in which Geralt would finally be able to help supervise Ciri’s training. He could feel it building in him, day by day, and while he was not at full force quite yet, he was strong enough to begin what Vesemir and the others had long held off. Soon, but not quite. However, Ciri was restless. In her he saw himself – eager to leave his sickbed, to be back in his armor and on the field. To be well again.

She had to wait a little longer, but that did not mean he could not help her divert a little of that impatience and steam. He took her down to the stables one morning as Yennefer busied herself in the library, building a curriculum with which to begin Ciri’s training of magic; and as Jaskier took up perch in the garden, working on new tunes and songs with which to work through everything he had not yet had time to even think about.

“Roach saved us, you know,” Geralt said as they walked – swiftly now. It felt so good to walk swiftly. Ciri was skipping beside him with the same energy of a bouncy border collie capable of sprinting and yet choosing to stay by its master’s side. Buzzing with excitement and surplus energy.

Ciri swiveled her too large eyes on him and said, as if it were plain as day, “I know.”

Nothing else. He smiled at that. Ciri felt like a jigsaw piece he hadn’t realized was missing, and while he’d be forever bristly about the fact that that feeling was large and wide because of fate rather than any built up relationship – he still enjoyed it. Perhaps that was fate’s doing too. He shook his head of the thought before it drove him mad.

“Good,” he said with a nod, holding the stable door open for Ciri to pass in. She went to Roach immediately, and Geralt felt a strange flutter in his chest – affection, he told himself, working on identifying such things – at the sight of Roach pushing her long face happily into Ciri’s hand with a cheerful whicker. “One day you’ll have a companion like Roach.”

“I will?” Ciri turned to look at him, excited.

Geralt arched a brow and said, “Don’t expect me to believe your Grandmother didn’t give you plenty of horses.”

Ciri blushed a little, but went back to stroking Roach when the horse made it plain that she did not approve of Ciri’s sudden distraction.

“Not like Roach,” she said, and immediately Geralt understood. They had learned to talk like this on the road. Bits and pieces that would mean nothing to most, but said everything to them. Of course she had had her pick of horses, but she was right. None of them would be like Roach. Those horses – pretty and thorough bred – were made for royal aesthetics, symbols of power. Horses like Roach were different beasts entirely. Bred from only the most loyal and steady steeds. Trained as a colt to remain steadfast in the presence of danger, albeit sometimes with the help of a swift Axii. Raised beside their witcher-to-be until an unbreakable bond was forged. Roach was no mere horse. Roach was Geralt’s partner, his trusted confidant, and she had more than once saved his life.

“You’ll have a steed like her one day, yes,” Geralt said, stepping forward to brush some of the mare’s forelock from her brow. Roach watched him with big eyes. “We’ll select a colt for you when the first of the colts are born and begin the process of training you both. In the meantime, there’s things you should know about horses like Roach. Things I don’t think you had a chance to learn as a princess.”

He almost expected her to whine when she found out what those things were. Stables had to be shoveled, after all, and attended to. Roach needed her blankets washed, her coat and mane brushed, her shoes maintained. It was not a beautiful process. In fact it could be downright tedious – but it was important. It was the deal a witcher made when they took up a horse.

“Your horse carries you, as Roach did us,” Geralt explained as he guided Ciri’s small hand on the brush in long, slow stripes across Roach’s body. “And in return, you must provide for them.”

“So like you, Yen and Jask?” Ciri asked innocently, the question no more blithe than if she had asked after the color of the sky. Geralt’s hand fell still and Ciri’s continued on without him, unaware.

“What do you mean?”

Ciri looked up at him, her little brow furrowed as if she thought he was making fun of her.

“You all do the same thing, don’t you?” She asked. “I’ve been watching. Listening. Jaskier talks when you can’t. Yennefer is bold where Jaskier might cower. You are steady where Yennefer wants to do three things at once. You all give and take. Like we do.”

“You and I give and take?” He arched a brow now, something amused if a little exposed edging into his tone now, any embarrassment blown away by his amazement of how keen children could be.

“You teach me, watch over me,” Ciri nodded, continuing to work on Roach, eyes focused on her task. “And I watch your back, teach you things too.”

“Like what?” Geralt asked, amusement plainly obvious now.

“Like the apple sauce,” she pointed out, and he hummed dutifully, “Or, uh…”

He smoothed back her hair as she thought that over, drawing her gaze back to stare up at him. He had the wildest urge to kiss her brow but managed to smother it down. Instead he allowed himself a smile – _she’d die, people who get too close die, they’re mortal and they die, and they’d be gone from old age soon enough anyway long before he began to feel the weariness of witchery in his mutated bones_ – and said, “You saved me on the road when you listened to Roach and fetched help instead of trying to fix things yourself, you’re right. We give and take.”

She beamed up at him, and that warm feeling rose in his chest once more like sunrise peeking over the horizon after a long night.

“Come on, let’s finish up. Roach detests blathering.”

“ _You_ detest blathering.”

“Hmm.”

— • —

By the time Geralt had finally healed, Yennefer and Jaskier quickly realized that they had a much different problem than they had anticipated. Although, honestly, _they should have anticipated it._ It was as if the white wolf felt he had to make up for lost time, because the man had gone from a cantering amount of activity each day to full out galloping through chores and training and building curriculum for Ciri and brushing up with the bestiaries and attending to Roach and, and, and –

“He’s going to wear himself out at this rate,” Jaskier said from the kitchen table before he plucked a grape from the vine and tossed it in his mouth, watching with an expression mixed between awe and horror. Geralt was currently leaning with one hip against the counter, a spread of pages across it, his hands full with a book and totally oblivious to the kettles beginning to steam and rattle behind him. He licked the tip of his quill and quickly jot down another note, only to startle comically when the kettle finally began its shrill screaming.

“Serves you right,” Jaskier snorted, grinning when Geralt cast him a dark glower over one shoulder before returning to pouring out water into three mugs, setting each to brew.

“I know this might be rich coming from me,” Yennefer said idly, watching Geralt work, “But you can afford to narrow your work to one thing at a time, Geralt.”

“No really,” the man grumbled, flipping a page, “We were lucky nothing happened while I was down, but that doesn’t mean that Ciri’s safe. Or any of us, for that matter. She must be taught. Trained. We—”

“—must be ready for a fight, if any, at any time,” Jaskier said, reciting the man’s words perfectly. Geralt glared at him again, but Jaskier didn’t back down. Instead he stood, taking a vine of grapes with him, and forced them into Geralt’s hand when the man had become distracted with his notes once more. “Eat. At least in this you must agree that you’re useless without food.”

Geralt grunted, but obliged.

Yennefer rolled her eyes at the table and muttered, “Stubborn mutt.”

They wouldn’t see him again until evening, they knew. And like clockwork, Geralt disappeared to fulfill various tasks until evening, returning only once his shirt was thoroughly ruined by the scent of a full day’s work, his hair tangled and the line of his shoulders weary. They managed to convince him to sit for another meal – relieved to hear that Ciri had managed to get him to eat lunch when he had insisted they break so _she_ might eat lunch. Why should she eat and not him? Clever girl.

But when Geralt moved to return to the study where Vesemir would normally be waiting for him to go over next steps in training Ciri and reinforcing the keep, Jaskier and Yennefer struck. Yennefer came in behind him – one hand on his shoulder easily leading the witcher back down onto the bench – and Jaskier came to her other side. The two of them crowded him into his spot, and Geralt looked utterly bewildered. Or at least as bewildered as blank-faced witchers ever looked.

“Vesemir—” he started.

“—Is _resting_. As you should be.”

“Resting,” Geralt repeated dumbly, as if not familiar with the meaning of the word.

“Yes, you know, that thing when people sit down for a moment to decompress, just exist? Take a bath, lay down, read a good book?” Jaskier blathered easily. Geralt snorted.

“I’ve bathed and laid and read plenty,” he said, and tried to stand again, only to be forced down. Again. He blew out a haughty breath, bristling and confused.

“This is unhealthy and unnecessary, Geralt,” Yennefer pressed.

Geralt grit his teeth, but didn’t bother arguing. They were right, after all. There was no immediate need to act as though war were on their doorstep. But the sickness that had stolen so much time from him curled in his stomach, filling him with dread.

“I’ve done enough ‘resting’,” he said finally. Yennefer hummed as though Geralt had suddenly pulled back the curtains and revealed everything.

“There isn’t just one way to rest, Geralt,” she purred, bending and looming over him to brush back a wild lock of white hair and whisper in his ear, “And you haven’t rested with _us_ yet.”

And that drew Geralt’s attention.

— • —

They coaxed him to the bedroom – two foxes luring a white wolf up the very many steps that led to their bed. They had set the mood as well, it would seem, because there were candles burning, filling the room with the heady scent distinctly Yennefer’s. Lilacs and gooseberries. If not for how far they had come, the things they had forgiven in one another, it might have made Geralt shiver – remembering the first time he had smelled it, the first time Yennefer had bent him to her whims.

“If you’re so restless,” Yennefer said smoothly, walking toward the open window to gaze upon the moon and twinkling stars beginning to rise in the sky, “Perhaps it is our fault.”

He expected Jaskier to balk, unsure of where this was going himself, and yet Jaskier just slid up beside Yennefer – looking downright scolded if not for that mischievous glint to his eyes – and said, “We’ve been poor masters indeed.”

“What?” Geralt asked dumbly, blinked, but in his gut something _stirred hungrily_ , like a beast waking from a long nap, and yawned with sleepy interest. He nearly flushed.

“A master is expected to wear out their energetic hounds, lest they drive themselves mad,” Yennefer supplied helpfully, one hand slipping up to her shoulder to gently expose the skin beneath, the collar of her dress dropping down her arm somewhat. “I imagine a wolf is no different.”

Jaskier grinned with too many teeth, drawing up to Yennefer to give her a quick peck on the corner of the mouth and murmured softly, “I’ll get things set up,” before going to the vanity and picking up a box that Geralt couldn’t remember being there that morning. A chest, actually – one that Jaskier brought to the bedside and opened, plucking out vials and ornate jars, among other things Geralt couldn’t quite name.

“What’s going on—”

“—I didn’t say you could talk.”

Geralt’s jaw clicked shut despite himself, his eyes darting back to Yennefer who had removed the top of her dress, two round breasts illuminated by the milky light of the moon. Her nipples were peaked with chill. That hunger in his gut woke more properly now, actively invested. Distracted enough that he didn’t even question the order or when orders like that had started in their bedroom.

“Ah. Thought so,” Yennefer said, eyes twinkling and smiling a pleased, knowing little smile as if Geralt had revealed some great tell in a game of Gwent. “Excellent. You’re doing so well, Geralt.”

And _that_ stoked the beginning of a blaze, catching him off guard. He had _liked_ that. More than he ever thought he might. But there was a simplicity to her orders; they were easy to follow, chased by praise. It made it easy to turn off the racing thoughts that had been haunting him ever since he had properly recovered, and he found himself wanting to chase that feeling. To turn off.

“Strip.”

This was it. Now was the time to decide how much power he was going to give them. Should he continue the game or should he leave? He didn’t have the sense that leaving would ruin some element of their relationship that could not be fixed. Yennefer was testing, experimenting. He had a decently certain feeling that if he didn’t play along, she would not force his hand or try again – and there would be no ill will. They were merely learning one another; and there was no better way to learn than to try.

He grunted, but obeyed. Neither of them helped, but they both watched. Watched as he untucked his shirt without flourish, unlaced his britches, ditched his shoes. He stripped himself clinically, with the efficiency of a man who was unused to stripping for the pleasure of others. Yennefer was decently certain that the concept of stripping lewdly had never crossed Geralt’s mind – a game for another day.

He stopped with his underthings still on, maintaining his last step of modesty, and forced himself not to react when Jaskier chuckled, amused.

“Everything, Geralt,” Yennefer purred, eyes already roving up and down his body.

So he stripped himself of everything but the medallion of his house and stood there, flanked by two lovers – two very clothed lovers – and gestured with his hands in a ‘now what’ sort of maneuver.

Yennefer smiled, plump lips pulled into a pleased little line, and directed her gaze to Jaskier as she asked, “Well? What do you think?”

Geralt’s gaze followed hers and met Jaskier’s – smoldering with a hunger that was both naked, bold and unabashed. Jaskier very much looked the part of the fox, perched on the corner of the bed nearest the nightstand, hands loose around a bottle of some sort. Distracted by Geralt, he realized. He felt… strange. Not a bad strange. Just not familiar. He had seen Jaskier chase skirts and trousers alike in bars and court affairs. He had watched Yennefer take him apart with her hands in that tub. He had seen Jaskier _aroused._

But he had never been on the receiving end of that look before, not directly. Not like this. Not just from Jaskier, but in general. He had never received a look that appeared as though someone wished to _eat_ him. Well, not like that.

Plenty of monsters wanted to eat him, of course. Just not fuck him. Fuck. Shut up, Geralt. He felt his cheeks flush hot when Jaskier’s grin just grew wider – sensing that the witcher was off balance like a shark might scent blood in the water.

“I think he’s being startlingly _good_ for us, Yen,” Jaskier praised, and Geralt startled when that shook a shiver down his spine and stoked the fire in his belly. “So good as to deserve a reward, in fact.”

“You heard him, wolf,” Yennefer said, catching Geralt’s very divided, very frayed and confused attention again. They were doing it on purpose, he realized. Corralling him now just as they had corralled him to their bed. They were dangerous together. Hunters working together. Geralt felt small between them. He shouldn’t like that as much as he did, but gods above, his cock twitched openly where all might see. And they both _knew_ somehow he would like it. Foxes. “Time for your reward.”

Geralt’s brows furrowed, not following their train of thought. He looked between them – and even in hindsight he wouldn’t admit that he was looking for direction – at a loss. Jaskier took pity on him first. The bard patted the bed beside him and said, “Come on, wolf. Belly down for me.”

Now he was really lost. He glanced between the two of them again, but when they both just kept watching him approvingly, waiting – still both bloody _dressed_ – he went to Jaskier and laid himself out prone on his stomach. He tried to brace himself up on his elbows to keep them in sight, but the bard merely tsked at him sweetly and gently guided him until he was completely flat.

“The effect isn’t the same without music,” Yennefer said, gliding over to the bed to sit beside him, not close enough to touch but enough to be present, to watch. “But Jaskier is about to have his hands quite busy, so you’ll have to do without.”

Geralt turned his head to look at her, still so utterly confused, and asked, “Without wha—” the question choked off when something decidedly warm trickled down onto his spine in a long line. He felt like a startled cat, bristly and arched, but Jaskier didn’t give him more time to react than that before he was climbing atop him, straddling his ass.

Another position Geralt was unfamiliar with.

“Hush, Geralt. Close your eyes, trust me, and _be a good boy._ ”

Geralt shivered again, eyes on Yennefer because he couldn’t see the bard without breaking their unsaid desire for him to remain flat. She nodded at him, looking oh so pleased – an expression that grew when Jaskier pressed the heels of his hands into the small of his back and dragged them up the column of his spine. He full body shivered, something fluttering in his stomach. Even at brothels a touch like this was uncommon. He was a bit clinical in his general approach to sex. It meant that sensitive areas like his back – areas he never would have guessed were sensitive – left him reeling with new sensations. Jaskier did that move with his hands again, the heels of his palms digging into the thickly corded muscle beneath, and Geralt couldn’t hold back the shocked little breath that squeezed out of him.

“You witchers, I swear,” Jaskier sighed, rolled his eyes dramatically, “How any of you have survived is astounding to me. Have you really never had a _massage_ before, Geralt?”

He opened his mouth to answer but Jaskier chose that moment – likely intentionally – to zero in on a knot in Geralt’s shoulder. He worked it with palm heels and thumbs, putting some leverage into it, and Geralt would never admit it, but his eyes had rolled up from the sheer relief of it. He hadn’t even realized the knots had been there, that they _shouldn’t_ be there; what it felt like to have them loosened. He huffed out a long, slow breath – lashes fluttering weakly against the span of his cheeks – too melted into the moment to care when Yennefer let out an amused chuckle.

“So good for us,” she purred.

“Our soft witcher, our beautiful wolf,” Jaskier agreed, then a little more tightly when he worked on another knot, “Our _mess_ of a beautiful white wolf – gods above, Geralt, you’re as tightly wound as a priest whose made his vows of abstinence with the gods!”

He didn’t answer. His brain was mush. The oil was so warm, Jaskier’s hands so soft and confident. Every knot released left him more and more like loose clay to be molded, his lips slack and his breathing sleepy.

Jaskier’s hands loosened his back, his shoulders, his biceps. They moved down, down past his lower back and – ah, yes. This was familiar.

“ _Can you really say we’re not friends when I just rubbed chamomile on your lovely bottom?_ ”

Yes, this was familiar. Jaskier kneaded his cheeks like they were a baker’s dough. Pressing in with his thumbs, rolling them in steadily wider and wider circles.

“Don’t think I believe your sleepy ruse for a minute, Geralt,” Jaskier said cheerfully, his thumbs slowly moving in a way they hadn’t before. “I fully intend to put you through your paces before the night is done.”

What did that mean— _oh._

Jaskier’s thumbs had slipped between the crack of his cheeks, brushed over the tight ring of muscle beneath. Slippery as they were, it was easy for the bard to flirt with his entrance. Pressing in with a thumb nail only to pull away and press with the flat of his thumb instead – again and again. He felt as though his limbs were made of molasses, his reactions slow.

“Far less resistance than I anticipated,” Yennefer commented, her hands reach out to brush back a sweaty lock of hair from his brow. The wolf’s gaze looked positively hazy, lost beneath his touch. Soft and trusting and curious, she noted, so curious. “Though I’m pleasantly surprised to see how utterly receptive you are, Geralt. Such a good boy.”

Geralt moaned despite himself, then turned to hide his face into the pillow when he realized what he had done, what he had let slip out. Yennefer chuckled fondly and curled a hand around the back of Geralt’s neck soothingly, her thumb petting over the knob of his spine. Jaskier’s progress was so steady, so minute, so gradual that Geralt didn’t even realize he had a finger up his ass until he had two of them in there.

“Jaskier,” he murmured into the pillow, feeling picked apart and exposed in a way he couldn’t even describe. That steady buzz of anxiety that had driven him to working nonstop these days was a distant thing now – buried deep beneath a layer of thrumming, hot-blooded pleasure.

“I’ve got you, Geralt,” Jaskier promised gently, so surprisingly gently, as he adjusted his fingers, his angle. “You’re being so good.”

Good. Theirs. Good. A good boy. It felt good to be praised. He was rarely ever praised. Not growing up. Not in his witchering. He felt starved of it, glutinous for more. His head felt abuzz with it all. Then that buzz scattered like stars streaking across the night sky when those fingers bent, crooked inside him, and left him reeling. White hot pleasure seared up his spine, tightening and rippling every muscle Jaskier had just loosened deliciously. Geralt had just sucked in a breath when Jaskier and Yennefer said something pleased to one another that he couldn’t make out and Jaskier crooked his fingers again. He clenched his teeth around a sound that was building in his chest, threatened to slip free, but managed to hold it in.

“Next time I’ll eat him out, I think,” he suddenly came back to, down from the high, Jaskier’s fingers gone as he adjusted his position. “If he reacted like that for my fingers, well… it’ll be quite a show with my tongue.”

“Tongue…?” Geralt repeatedly, woozy and fuzzy in a way that was not unlike being drunk, but so much better because he didn’t feel sick, didn’t feel dizzy. Just pleasantly floating. He didn’t have to think, have to move. Just follow orders and feel. He wish he had known about this feeling ages ago.

Jaskier’s hands were slipping under him now, coaxing him to kneel, and while his mind felt distant, Geralt’s body did it’s level best to follow on instinct. It left him propped in Jaskier’s lap, his ass above the bard’s crotch – his naked crotch. When had that happened?

“You undid him so beautifully, Jaskier. Remarkable work,” Yennefer hummed, that electric current of hunger sharp in her voice. He opened his eyes as she cupped his jaw, suddenly in front of him. Not just in front of him, but practically in his lap and getting closer. “Are you certain this won’t crush you, darling?”

“Only one way to find out,” Jaskier said.

Something was parting his cheeks again. He nearly twisted to see, to understand, when suddenly Yennefer had her hands on his prick, slicking it with that too-warm-just-right oil that Jaskier had used on his back. He moaned, the sounds too strong to hold back now as Yennefer teased the slit of his cock with a thumb nail. He tossed his head back, white hair spread across Jaskier’s shoulder, leaning heavily into the bard’s chest.

“I’ve got you,” Jaskier promised in a whisper against the flesh of his throat, peppering it with kisses and nips as he babbled, “You’re doing so well. So proud of you for trusting us. For letting us in.”

And _in_ he definitely let them, because he was decently sure Jaskier was slipping _into him_ with his cock. It spread him slowly, so fully, taking him in a place he had never been taken before – too buzzed to be anxious, perfectly content in letting Jaskier guide him to whatever destination he had in mind.

“Such a good wolf we have,” Yennefer said as she lifted himself over her lap. Something sparked at that, he knew this, knew this posture, this look. Her eyes met his as she sunk her wet heat onto his prick and his slack lips pulled back to bare his teeth at that – overwhelmed, taken at two ends. She clenched and writhed around him, walls of slick warmth undulating and tugging him deeper as she shimmied down further. He couldn’t even lift his head from Jaskier’s shoulder anymore, too torn between two worlds to function as Jaskier began to set a pace for both of them, fucking up into him, thus into her.

Above him Yennefer moaned like a litany, her hands cradling his jaw, forcing him to look at her, to keep eye contact as she said, “I want to _see_ you. All of you.”

Gods above, how much more was left to see? He felt scraped clean and laid out to dry, every bit of him exposed and over sensitized. Her hands moved to loop around his neck – as well as Jaskier’s – and she kissed the bard over his shoulder before returning her attentions to him. Jaskier’s hands moved from his hips to his nipples. Yennefer’s hands guided Geralt’s to her breasts, urging them to cup and pinch and grope.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Geralt breathed in a reedy, broken chant. That fire in his belly was a blaze now; roaring and searing him from the inside out, stoked that much higher with every order – _kiss me, now my neck, suckle my breasts, reach back to cup Jaskier’s neck, yes good –_ and every kind word of praise – _so good, our good boy, our witcher, so good and all ours._ There was a sound now, high and breathless and keening, and with a blink he realized it was him. He was whining, as close as he could get to begging, as Jaskier and Yennefer both closed a hand over his cock and began to stroke him as one.

Jaskier, the bastard, had remembered where his fingers had pressed to make Geralt react like that before and he was relentless in his dogging of that spot. Thrusting in short, abortive little burst, then in hard, deep slow strokes, then bursts again.

Geralt moaned, words beyond him, lost in the haze they had dragged him into. They had peeled him of every layer, laid him out beneath them, framed him on either side until there was nothing left but _more_ and _tell me what to do_ and _don’t stop._

There was a deep, instinctual, almost animal pleasure in this. In simply existing, sandwiched between them, worrying only about rutting and being good. Something relieving in not making the decisions or the plans after decades of having no one but himself to make every decision and bare the weight of every plan. He melted into them totally, finally, and let them drive. He drifted, lulled by the hum of their voices now – nonsensical and far away, dancing over him like a stone sending ripples across a still pond.

“So good, such a good man.”

The haze broke only when that pleasure-heat had finally been stoked to a writhing inferno. It gripped his gut, sending his hips into a rolling, writhing mess atop Jaskier and pinned beneath Yennefer as he came, the force of it blinding him, head thrown back against Jaskier’s shoulder, mouth open – deft to his own howling. His hands would leave bruises on Yennefer’s hip and Jaskier’s thigh beneath him, he would find out later, but for now he held onto each of them like a life line until his orgasm passed. He wilted between them, chest heaving, as Yennefer chased her own pleasure atop him and Jaskier followed quickly after inside him – teeth buried in his shoulder and _growling_ with more force than a bard had any right to growl.

“Downright territorial of you, Jaskier. Beautiful, albeit surprising. I was much more inclined to believe you would wax poetic to us or sing,” Yennefer mused as she removed herself from Geralt’s lap.

“Anyone else, I would,” Jaskier said, the littlest bit surprised himself it would seem, “But this was different.”

“Indeed,” Yennefer hummed, easing Geralt off of Jaskier’s prick – eyes on his hole as it gaped slightly with Jaskier’s absence, pearly cum beginning to leak from it. She gathered his jaw in her hands again, sought out his eyes, and smiled wolfishly as she said, “He opened up to that rather beautifully, didn’t he?”

Jaskier hummed, just as pleased, as he peppered Geralt’s back with kisses. “Better than expected, I really thought we’d need to coax him there with far more guidance. How long do you think this will last?”

“This deep? Hard to say with a witcher,” she said, easing up from the bed, drawing Geralts hands in her own as she murmured warmly, “Up we go, wolf. To the baths, then some meats and some cheeses, and bed. Up, up. Be good now.”

He followed. In a pleasant, cared for haze he let them ease him into the tub. He hummed and purring and grumbled pleasantly as Jaskier washed his hair and Yennefer cleaned his skin, each of them taking their time. He watched lazily as they attended to one another. They dried him. Plied him with food.

Then they tucked themselves into either side of him, petting him through the submissive daze they had helped him reach. It was some time later, the three of them dozing lightly in the bed, that finally his lashes fluttered open – some semblance of clarity in his amber eyes.

“Ah, there he is,” Jaskier said, propping his chin up on Geralt’s chest to beam at him, “Hello there.”

He felt Yennefer’s gaze fall on him as well, expectant and waiting – although for what, he wasn’t sure. His mouth worked open and closed a few times, but he had no words, no idea of where to even start. Yennefer smiled, pleased.

“Good. It worked. We struck the witcher too dumb to keep working himself into the ground,” she said. He grunted, grumpy – albeit too wrung out with pleasure, too loose from sex and exhaustion for there to be any real heat to it. She leaned over his chest to share a celebratory kiss with the bard, short and sweet and chaste. Geralt just stared on, almost owlishly, before letting his head fall back into the pillows with a soft, stunned ‘fuck’.

Jaskier patted his chest consolingly, but his grin was anything but remorseful as he said, “Don’t worry, Geralt, you’re in good hands.”

And he was.

**Author's Note:**

> It was supposed to be short.  
> (soft, exhausted sobbing)
> 
> Side note: if y'all liked what you read and wanna submit prompts or anything, check out my Tumblr (Funkzpiel) and poke my inbox. Sometimes I fill things. And sometimes I disappear into the darkness beneath my bed and hibernate for months, who can know these things.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Threads of Fate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22873150) by [Llama1412](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llama1412/pseuds/Llama1412)
  * [[Art] Smother](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22977112) by [drjezdzany (Lorien)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorien/pseuds/drjezdzany)




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